Bui, a Vietnam-born Californian, delivers in her debut graphic novel a cinematic epic that poignantly tracks several generations through immigration and emotional dislocation. At its best, this memoir feels not just created but also deeply lived.

Bui’s first book has earned acclaim from comics and literary journals as well as Entertainment Weekly and Teen Vogue, and was featured alongside new works by Roxane Gay and Joan Didion in Huffington Post’s list of this year’s essential nonfiction books by women.

For Thi Bui, 12 years is how long it took to get the story she wanted to tell where it needed to be. And now, at 42, she’s published her first graphic novel, The Best We Could Do, a far-ranging illustration of her family’s life in Vietnam, their refugee journey to the United States, and her life building her own Vietnamese-American family.

Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do” is a devastating—and wholly human—exploration of the wounds of war.

At first glance, Thi Bui’s illustrated memoir tells the story of her family fleeing Vietnam in the 1970s to start life anew in California. But on a deeper level, the book transcends the stereotypical refugee plot line.

As someone who has a soft spot for graphic novels (and a hankering to explore them in new ways for my readers...), interviewing graphic novelist and now picture book illustrator Thi Bui was a dream come true. Thi Bui recently illustrated the highly revered A Different Pond, and rather than creating a large preamble, I'd like to just dive into the interview. Enjoy.

Thi Bui’s debut graphic novel — a memoir about her family’s immigration from Vietnam to the United States during the Vietnam War — had me weeping openly on the New York City subway (a great place to cry).

On the cover of Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir is a perfect quote: “A book to break our heart and heal it,” blurbs fellow Vietnamese American refugee and 2016 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do is a book that you read in one intense sitting and take days to fully process.

When Bui began work on The Best We Could Do in 2005, she couldn’t have predicted the significance it would hold when it was released in 2017, but now that it’s here, it feels like one of the first great works of socially relevant comics art of the Trump era.

Before she began to work on her graphic novel in 2007, Thi Bui had never drawn a comic in her life. Now, 10 years later, she'll debut her family's story through an illustrated memoir already being praised by literary heavyweights, such as Maxine Hong Kingston and Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Artist and public-school teacher Bui’s memoir and graphic-novel debut is a stunning work of reconstructed family and world history.

Tracing her family’s journey to the United States and their sometimes-uneasy adaptation to American life, Bui’s magnificent memoir is not unique in its overall shape, but its details are: a bit of blood sausage in a time of famine, a chilly apartment, a father’s sandals contrasted with his son’s professional shoes.