40 pages • 1 hour read
Thi BuiThe Best We Could Do
Nonfiction | Graphic Novel/Book | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
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BetaSymbols & Motifs
Birth
The notion of birth is central to the idea of family. Both of these things are salient foci of The Best We Could Do. The narrative begins and ends with the birth of Thi’s son and documents numerous births within the Bui family—including Hắng’s stillbirth and the death of her first baby. Birth is the defining characteristic of a family for Bui: The act of creating one new life from two preexisting ones, and the struggle of nurturing that life so that it may enjoy a future, while grappling with the pain and trauma of the past, is what composes the life of a family. The idea of birth encapsulates past, present, and future, and is therefore an analog to the idea of family itself. Through this motif, Bui communicates the temporal and emotional complexity of the family as a unit.
Freedom
The motif of freedom recurs throughout the narrative, but it’s not freedom of a singular kind. The most prominent example of this motif is Thi’s feeling of unfreedom in her childhood, contrasted against her hope for the freedom of her son. The family’s refugee story is a journey toward freedom from war, danger, and suffering. The entire narrative is invested in the idea of freedom in both concrete and figurative terms: the physical and social freedom that the family sought through its flight from Việt Nam, as well as the emotional freedom, over and above trauma, that Thi, Hắng, and Nam all yearn for. Intriguingly and slightly paradoxically, Thi grounds this exploration in her family as a unit. A family unit can be a constricting mechanism, which is technically the opposite of freedom. However, Bui manages to marry these two ideas together, and thereby asserts that her own life, and her own freedom, are linked to her family members’ lives and journeys toward freedom. In this way, freedom is both independent and not, interwoven as it is with the fates and lives of others.
The Family Members’ Document Files
When the Buis began their life in America, they judiciously accumulated all their important documents in plain brown folders. These folders grew stuffed as the Bui children accumulated academic accolades and other documentations of their new life. When a fire broke out in their San Diego apartment complex, each of the Buis automatically took their document files out of the apartment as they evacuated from it. These files therefore concisely symbolize the refugee experience—and the enduring trauma of that experience that continues to exercise its influence despite the life of the refugee stabilizing. This conditioning to have all important items packed and portable is a result of the Bui’s flight from Việt Nam, and it depicts the necessity of collecting one’s wits during a crisis for the purposes of survival as second nature to the refugee. The files are therefore a poignant reminder of the fact that the scars of displacement and war take a lifetime to heal.
