Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Best We Could Do, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family, Inheritance, and Parenthood
Intergenerational Trauma
Assimilation, Belonging, and Cultural Identity
Repression and Freedom
Memory and Perspective
Summary
Analysis
Thi Bui draws her residential neighborhood in Berkeley, California—by 2015, her responsibilities have multiplied: she has a son, a job, and a mortgage. But she rewinds to 1999, when she was a young woman and about to move from San Diego to New York to pursue art. She tells Má that she’ll be living with her boyfriend (who is also an artist), and Má responds, “I see,” with a turned back. Thi tells herself that, “for an immigrant kid,” moving in with a boyfriend is “living the dream.” When Thi’s older sister Lan left home to live with her boyfriend, Má had been denial. Whenever Má called Lan’s house and Lan’s boyfriend picked up the phone, Má hung up immediately: she believed cohabitating before marriage was wrong.
By returning to 1999, Bui shows how completely her life transformed in just a few years, in a way she could not have predicted beforehand. Má’s refusal to sanction Thi’s plans or to acknowledge Lan’s boyfriend shows not only the difference in cultural expectations about family and romance between Việt Nam and the United States, but also suggests that Má—like Thi—is not entirely sure how to make sense of two opposite systems of cultural values. Notably, she does not throw out or threaten Thi and Lan—rather, she chooses to simply ignore the behavior of which she cannot approve.
Themes
But Má and Lan’s disagreement was not nearly the family’s worst. Bích, another of Thi’s sister, tried to hide her boyfriend from Má, who grew furious when she found out. Bích simply leaves home—in the illustration, she leaves a note reading, “I’m sorry.” Má discovers it and takes “a whole bottle of pills” in her room. Lan has already moved out, and Bố tells Thi and her younger brother (Tâm) that Bích “is DEAD to us.” Má recovers, but the family never talks about what happened—Má even thinks Thi has forgotten, but after 30 years, Thi is “still ANGRY.”
By leaving home, Bích threatens the family’s integrity and unity, and Má’s extreme reaction reflects the energy she has put into establishing this family throughout her life. This explosive episode demonstrates how Bui’s family buries its conflicts, which perhaps explains why she did not grow up with a full understanding of the trauma that her parents experienced in Việt Nam and decided to reconstruct and narrate it later.
Themes
Thi Bui presents her family through a series of portraits. There are her parents, Má and Bố, and then her siblings, two of whom—Quyên and Thảo—are depicted as shadows. The other siblings, from oldest to youngest, are Lan, Bích (“pronounced BICK”), Thi, and Tâm. In a drawing of her, Travis, and her son, Thi says that she has made sense of how to be a wife and mother, but still cannot figure out how to be “both a parent and a child, without acting like a child.” Thi depicts her parents as silhouettes, younger than she is now, fleeing Việt Nam in a boat. She wonders if she “will always be a child” to them, and if Má and Bố will always be polar opposites separated by “a chasm, full of meaning and resentment.”
Bui portrays her family with serious expressions, which indicates the enduring tension between them. Quyên and Thảo have discernable faces but are clearly no longer around—whether they have died or disappeared, the family has clearly suffered loss. Bui makes it clear that parenthood has forced her to challenge the understanding she has of her family, and specifically to empathize with her parents. She understands that they have made immense sacrifices, but wonders why, to what end, and whether she might be able to do the same.
Themes
Thi, Travis, and their son move from New York to California in 2006, to be with Thi’s parents. But she realizes that “proximity and closeness are not the same,” as while her entire family lives close by, her parents are still lonely in their old age, longing to be taken care of. In Việt Nam, Má and Bố would be “very old” and expected to live with children—but the United States, they are expected to live on their own. Thi does not know how to resolve these conflicting expectations. She talks it over with Travis in bed.
Before, Má was forced to negotiate between the Vietnamese cultural expectations she grew up with and the American ones her daughters were fulfilling, but now, Bui has to make a similar choice, deciding whether to care for her parents according to Vietnamese or American norms about aging. She now inherits responsibility for the family from her parents—but she realizes she does not completely understand the conditions under which they made their decisions about what to do with and for the family.
Themes
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Thi remembers meeting Má's mother and Má's father and her uncle Hải when she was 12, after they moved to the United States. The visit was transactional and failed to give her insight into parents. Bố insisted that “he had no parents,” even though he did, and he never went to visit any of his family in Việt Nam. But Thi did go, and this trip inspired her to start “record[ing] our family history” in order to better understand and love her parents. She interviews Má over coffee at their back patio table, in front of the picture she is imagining, a small wooden boat in the ocean. Má answers the questions, but likes to change the subject to more “practical” matters (like dinner). In general, she is not fond of “I love yous.”
Bui zeroes in on the fundamental contradiction in her relationship with her family: although they have sacrificed profoundly for her and her siblings, she does not have the close relationship she needs to reciprocate their care and labor. Bố’s comment adds another layer of contradiction: he clearly does not value his own parents, even though he presumably dedicated so much energy to his own family. Má’s more “practical” concerns suggest that perhaps labor and sacrifice have become second nature to her, to the extent that she no longer recognizes or is willing to process the reasons that she made sacrifices in the first place.
Themes
Alongside images of Thi Bui’s neighborhood, she asks, “how did we get to such a lonely place?” Looking out over the ocean, she hopes that tracking her family’s lineage back to Việt Nam by “seeking an origin story […] will set everything right.”
Setting the stage for the rest of her book, Bui gazes at the Pacific Ocean that separates California and Việt Nam, which represents the distance she has come from her place of origin. An enduring question throughout the book will be whether, and to what extent, Bui can claim Việt Nam as her true home or the basis of her identity.
Themes
In 1978, Má gives birth to Tâm in a Malaysian refugee camp. She makes dinner during the labor, and does not mention that she is about to give birth until everyone finishes. The family takes Má in a hammock to the water, where she, Hải, and Bố take a boat to the midwife’s hut. She gives birth “quickly [and] without the aid of drugs.”
Bui returns to her siblings’ births, narrating them in reverse. The difficult conditions under which Má gives birth to Tâm contrast with Bui’s relative comfort and passivity in the hospital. It’s clear now that Bui may have been reluctant to get an epidural precisely because she knew that Má never had that luxury.
Themes
In 1974 in Sài Gòn, Má has a stillbirth. Nobody knows why this daughter, Thảo, does not survive. A year later, in 1975, Thi Bui is born. Her parents say she has the face of “Phât Bà Quan Âm, the Goddess of Mercy,” to whom they prayed. Bích is born in 1968, two weeks before the Tết Offensive, during which the family locks itself inside with the radio, to avoid the war on the streets. And Lan is born in 1966, in a rural part of the Mekong Delta, where Má is employed as a teacher.
Thảo’s death explains why she was blacked out in Bui’s family portrait, and Bui makes it clear that she herself was a sort of replacement for her sister, a way for her parents to cope with the trauma of losing a child. Like Tâm’s birth, those of Bui’s other siblings take place under difficult circumstances. Má and Bố’s lives do not stop for their children; rather, they deal with war and pursue their careers, and their children are only born along the way. In contrast, Bui’s son’s birth is an essential and defining event in her own life—it even changes her life’s course by convincing her to write this book. Perhaps Bui shines a light on Má’s six births in order to show that, in retrospect, they were more important and life-altering than they may have seemed at the time.
Themes
Although she is just 22 when Lan is born, Má has just lost another daughter in Sài Gòn. Some Vietnamese people fear that “giv[ing] a baby a beautiful name [means] jealous spirits will come take the baby away,” but Má and Bố name her Giang Quyên, “a name that sounded like and meant GREAT RIVER.” Má and Bố’s families are divided about how to feed Quyên. The formula gets the baby, and she dies soon thereafter in the hospital. Má is devastated. As Thi shifts the scene back to California in the present, she asks how Quyên’s death affected Má’s feelings and hopes for her other children. The past created a “gray stillness” in the family, a lasting sorrow that they did not fully acknowledge or understand but were always aware of.
When Quyên dies, Má and Bố’s family life begins with a heartbreaking loss and tragic disappointment. Their choice of a “beautiful name” suggests that they were fully invested in and excited about parenthood, to the point of naivety. The role of Quyên’s death in the rest of the family’s story is something like the place of Việt Nam in Bui’s life: it is a foundational trauma, which sets the tone for everything that follows. If Má and Bố blamed themselves for Quyên’s death or were traumatized by it, this would explain their subsequent emotional withdrawal from the rest of their children.
Themes
