Category Archives: Thi Bui

page 250 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

Being captain of a ship with a bunch of starving people and kids would be a nightmare – nobody would know what to do (and what not to do) and everybody would think they have a right to the ship’s operation (like the engine or the water supply). Having been in the Navy, reading this section makes me laugh, cringe, and stressed out all at the same time – and yet I’m not the one fleeing for my life.

page 221 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

Everyone spying on each other, class disparity, government control – it’s like these things just keep happening over and over again no matter what country you live in – now it’s becoming America’s turn to dive head first into this insanity because if anyone thinks the artifice of society and government and safety are permanent has not opened the books those in power want to burn.

page 213 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

At the same time, spring 1975, while Vietnam was (either won or lost, depending on who you asked and which side you were one), Cambodia was also being taken over by communist forces, the Khmer Rouge, and that would lead to the killing fields and the horrific genocide in that country. It feels like Cambodia has yet to recover from those events, while Vietnam currently seems like it stands on its own now.

page 206 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

I like how she shows how complicated the situation was for her parents. Her father talks about the general who killed the Viet Cong in the head (the famous photo) and about how he hated that the military treated the people like criminals, but then also talks about how that Viet Cong had murdered his family a few hours earlier. There aren’t really sides here, it’s more complexities of nuance and gray and surviving.

page 168 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

She also shows the ugly side of Vietnamese independence and how 200,000 were killed in the Land Reforms and that nobody was really free and the police made sure you clapped during the propaganda films. Not much of a life, especially if you’ve enjoyed the material luxuries of the French. Hard to go back home again (which he literally is doing but is struggling with seeing the upside to).

page 158 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

It’s interesting how even though the French brought so many luxuries to Vietnam, which her father enjoyed, especially since he had been so poor initially before attending French school, so many people were willing to give it up to claim an independent identity, even if it meant sacrificing family. Speaks to the power that blood has over material things, and how much freedom is more valued than being ruled.

page 150 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

I don’t know if I should admit this, but I agree with her mother about how “Marriage = trap” and “Education = freedom”. I know it’s possible to balance the two, but I know it’s also a struggle and when you have to decide between the two you’re almost always going to side with family rather than freedom – and not that it’s a negative thing to do so, but balancing self vs others is always a conflict and tension.

page 143 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

Her mother grew up VERY privileged when the French were the colonizers in Vietnam. She was very rich, had servants, and her mother was sure proud of her lifestyle – meanwhile so many people were living in poverty and were arming themselves to fight the French, and people like her mother = class war. How many times in history has a country been ripped apart by class tensions?

page 136 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

I think I can understand why her mother was more comfortable talking to her daughter’s husband about her past than to her own daughter since it creates a sort of buffer by talking to someone you share no blood and past with and so it doesn’t get all mixed up and confused or misinterpreted or interrupted, though it does suck that the communication can’t be more connected between mother and daughter.

page 133 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

Interesting how her opinion of her mother is tied up with the opinion of herself, as if they are sort of one person while also being two different people, which is sort of the way kids work, I suppose in that we’re a lot like our parents while also our own people.

She draws her mother (as she knows her) as being sort of stiff and like her mind is somewhere else, though she was a lot different before having kids

page 130 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

I’m glad she explored her father’s past since it informs so much of the man he became, why he didn’t want to coddle the children because he knew how cruel the world could be and it’s probably better to prepare the kids then tell them it will be alright. Besides, he wouldn’t have known any better since his own childhood was terrible – how would he know how to raise kids?

page 84 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

A lot of her anxieties as a kid are about not being able to find her way home, like the story her father told her about the guy who could astral project but his friends dressed his sleeping body up and his spirit couldn’t find it’s way back and he went insane (great story). Perhaps this is what the experience of the immigrant is, coupled with a sort of Exorcist possession where one culture invades the immigrant.

page 75 of 330 of The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir

Maybe it isn’t that her father didn’t answer her questions because he wasn’t interested in making her feel safe, but that he wanted her to understand how the world can be scary and it’s good to learn how to deal with that rather than only be reassured all the time. Not that you can go all in one way or the other, but there should be a balance. So is she being unfair to her father?