"The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir"

"We had arrived in summer," writes Thi Bui, "so there was time to prepare for school in the fall." But as immigrants from Vietnam, her family needed time to adjust. You mean you choose classes? They don't just hand you your schedule?

Bui, a graphic artist now based in the Bay Area, as a youngster escaped with her family after the fall of South Vietnam, landing on American soil on June 28, 1978.

Later, as a graduate student, she wanted to capture her family's history. "My parents have been separated since I was nineteen," she writes, though they "remain friends." But what happened? Words were not enough, so in 2005 she learned "how to do comics." Pages of drawings accumulated.

Later, she and her husband and son moved from New York to California, where she taught at "an alternative public high school for immigrants in Oakland." Her book took shape as a graphic memoir, and in 2017 it was published as "The Best We Could Do: An Illustrated Memoir" ($19.99 in paperback from Abrams ComicArts; also for Amazon Kindle, with a helpful pronunciation guide at thebestwecoulddo.abrams.link).

It is fitting, at the start of a new school year, that Bui's own explorations of her past become part of the reader's experience as well. "The Best We Could Do" is the "Book In Common" for 2022-2023 for Butte College (butte.edu/bic) and Chico State (www.csuc.edu/bic) and other community groups.

Bui's parents and their growing family knew the ravages of war. In 1975 South Vietnam's president Duong Van Minh surrendered to the north. Bui's father, in talks with his daughter years later, wants to correct "the American version of this story … about a country not worth saving…. Communist forces entered Saigon without a fight, and no blood was shed. Perhaps Duong Van Minh's surrender saved my life."

But the Communist regime ushered in a propaganda campaign and confession sessions with neighbor spying on neighbor. "My parents," Bui writes, "began to talk of escape."

Filled with emotion, the book's images and dialog convey the complexity of the past--and the realization that one's very-flawed parents were trying to do the best they could.

"A Fire Story"

In simple drawings, artist Brian Fies (brianfies.blogspot.com) tries to make sense of the "mind-numbing disaster" he and his wife faced not so long ago. "Karen and I evacuated our home north of Santa Rosa ... at around 1:30 a.m. on Monday, October 9, 2017. Based on when our neighbors began getting text messages from their home security systems, we think our neighborhood burned around 2:30 a.m."

The couple was taken in by their twin daughters, and the next day, using "a pad of low-quality pulp paper, one permanent marker, a fine-point felt-tip pen, and four colored highlighters," he began telling the tale in word and image. Soon KQED aired a short animated version of Fies' work, and recently the PBS News Hour reported on what has now been published as a full-length "graphic memoir."

"A Fire Story" ($24.99 in hardcover from Harry N. Abrams; also for Amazon Kindle) is not just about escaping the flames, but what happened afterward, from disorientation to the eventual decision to rebuild. Readers who survived the Camp Fire may find an uncanny emotional resonance with Fies' narrative (the scope is different, of course, but the similarities are stunning), so much so that they may be moved to tears. At least, a certain book columnist I know had that reaction.

Fies intersperses stories of his neighbors and friends. Neighbor Mari and her husband lost everything, including two cats. "I feel like someone forced me into the witness protection program," she tells Brian. "I have no history." 

"Well-meaning people say 'It's just stuff,'" Brian writes. "But it was ourstuff. Stuff we created. Stuff we treasured. Stuff from our ancestors we wanted our descendants to have. Stuff is a marker of time and memory. It's roots. I am uprooted."

Then, "a day in the new life." Karen is reading the newspaper, and Brian says, "I think I'll make a pitcher of iced tea." "Sounds good," she says. Pause. Pause. "No pitcher," he says. "Put it on the list," she says.

Finally, "within a few weeks of the fire, green reappeared amid the black and gray. ... Flowers and trees can come back, changed and scarred but still beautiful. So can we."