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 offers various images and stories about what some call “Liberation Day” and others, like her family, call “The Day We Lost Our Country.” She illustrates “the image that most people know of the fall of Sài Gòn,” a crowd of people climbing into a helicopter on their roof. But this contrasts with her parents’ experience: they learn about the events through their radio, worrying as they raise Thi and learn about the North Vietnamese progressively approaching Sài Gòn. They remember “the 1968 massacre in Huế” and worry that “Sài Gòn would become a sea of BLOOD.” When they hear of South Việt Nam’s surrender, Bố runs outside and is relieved to see that no one has been injured. This relatively tame takeover contrasts with “the American version of this story,” which blames the South Vietnamese for not saving themselves from the North.
The competing names for and narratives about “Liberation Day,” which again show the war’s deep human cost and people’s sometimes-contradictory allegiances to whichever side promised to oppress them the least. This contrasts almost comically with the singular, inadequate “image that most people [outside Việt Nam] know of the fall of Sài Gòn.” After all, this is an image of Americans and American allies, not the Vietnamese who constituted the vast majority of those affected by the war. Má and Bố’s fears, borne of their experiences in the war’s previous phases, are a much more typical story of how people on the ground experienced the end of the war. But, as Bui consistently emphasizes, their experiences are individualized, never a “typical” or “adequate” narrative for the conflict as a whole.
Themes
A week after “Liberation Day,” Má and Bố are ordered to teach a totally “new curriculum” and write confessions about their and their families’ complicity in the war. Teachers start disappearing, and Bố’s grandmother worries, since she remembers the land reforms.
With the North Vietnamese government now paying their salaries, Má and Bố have to adapt to teaching the opposite of what they used to, which is a reminder of the flexibility and power of the narratives that people tell and teach about history. They also begin suffering the exact kind of persecution Bố’s family used to fear in the North. In other words, the nightmare of Bố’s childhood returns in full force.
Themes
Má and Bố start planning to escape on a friend’s boat—but the friend gets captured. The family’s neighbor, a spy, hints that the same might happen to them. In preparation, Má and Bố burn all the books in the house. During his “visit,” the “neighborhood monitor” finds nothing incriminating, but the family knows they are going to be labeled “ngụy,” or “false, lying, deceitful,” and therefore subject to constant surveillance and the threat of separation.
Although Bui does not discuss migration trends at the time in much depth, the kind of escape her family planned was an exceedingly common way for Vietnamese people to escape the new government. Their burning of books directly represents the new regime’s suppression of ideas and attempt to impose a new culture by force. And the government does not even require concrete evidence against Bui’s family to deem them enemies of the state.
Themes
Bố gets fired and nearly sent to a “New Economic Zone”—a place “to do hard labor in rural isolation.” The government changes the currency, wiping out the family’s savings. Má must become the sole provider for their children while Bố “retreat[s] into a deep depression.”
These devastating events, although officially ways of redistributing resources and reducing inequality, hit Bui’s relatively comfortable family hard. While Má adapts to the situation, Bố’s “deep depression” looks a lot like the one he suffers in the United States many years later, and the timing of it suggests that it is connected to the repeated dangers and threats of death or disappearance he receives throughout his life. In other words, he gets demoralized because he feels he is gradually losing the fight for survival.
Themes
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In 1976, Bố’s father pays Bố a surprise visit to tell him that his mother is alive and well in China. Bố’s father asks if they can “forgive and forget,” but reveals that they cannot reunite because Má’s family is “just too ngụy.” Bố’s father leaves, and they never meet again. Bố never writes to his mother.
Bố’s father only further demoralizes Bố, because he visits for selfish reasons and is forced to put politics above family. He expects further betrayal, and his father delivers. Indeed, Bố’s father’s call to “forgive and forget” reveals his complete misunderstanding of how deeply Bố’s past has affected him. But perhaps the greatest tragedy in Bố’s family is his relationship with his mother—who did not choose to leave him and decided to move to China only out of circumstance. Still, for Bố, regardless of her intentions, she has never been present in his life and has nothing to contribute to it.
Themes
Má sells the family’s possessions to buy food, and Hải is arrested and disappears. In school, the children are taught about “how to report suspicious behavior.” Má and Bố plan another escape, which also fails. Meanwhile, Bố’s grandmother falls ill and Má gets pregnant. Legally, she is required to abort, but the doctor makes an exception.
The family’s situation continues to deteriorate, and the government’s war of ideas goes one step further, weaponizing children against their parents. Although always adaptable, Bui’s family begins to approach the limits of its flexibility. In retrospect, it is easy to see why Má and Bố were forever scarred by these experiences.
Themes
Finally, some good news comes. Not only is Hải alive, but his wife, Kiều, and her family are buying a boat and planning an escape. If Má can help recruit other people to buy seats on the boat, her whole family can go, too. When Hải gets out of prison, it is time for the escape, even though Má is now eight months into her pregnancy. The family takes a bus to the city of Cần Thơ, leaving Bố’s grandmother in Sài Gòn, in the care of Má’s parents. After a stressful day of waiting, they make it to the boat, which is full of friends and family members. The children cannot stomach the food and have trouble sleeping at night.
Although the chance to escape surfaces almost miraculously, it also could not happen at a worse time, given Má’s pregnancy and Bố’s grandmother’s illness. Forced to make sacrifices, Má and Bố lead their three daughters into a completely uncertain future, as evidenced by their complete lack of knowledge about when they will be picked up in Cần Thơ. And beyond the dangers of leaving and potentially getting caught in the act, the boat itself is uncomfortable and dangerous, even if Bui is surrounded by family and friends.
Themes
Suddenly, the boat hits an island and gets stuck. There are police boats nearby, so everyone worries about drawing their attention. Mr. Châu, the boat’s pilot, swims away to try and unstick the boat. Meanwhile, the other adults hide below deck and sedate all the children with valium. After a few hours, the rising tide releases the boat back into the river, and Mr. Châu returns from the water.
Although Má and Bố are lucky to survive this brush with fate, the children are perhaps luckier still to not remember it; the police could put an end not only to the family’s escape attempt, which is many months in the making, but also to their autonomy and livelihoods.
Themes
But Mr. Châu is traumatized and incapable of piloting the boat, so the adults decide that Bố should take over the job. They head out toward international waters, after which they plan to turn southwest toward Malaysia. They continue to face challenges, however. Some Thai fishing boats, possibly pirates, start following them—but eventually turn away. Lan discovers that the travelers’ water supply is contaminated, and the men stress about refueling the boat.
Suddenly, Bố is called to be a hero. After a life of suffering at others’ hands and trying to escape danger however possible, he is finally charged with taking others’ lives into his own hands, and he meets the challenge. The journey continues to pose difficulties, but the savvy adults on the boat respond to them in kind, and the voyagers’ air is jovial but cautious.
Themes
But at night, it is finally safe to open the hatch and bring everyone up onto the deck for some fresh air. Má teaches Lan to avoid seasickness by watching the stars. Bố is illustrated alone on the deck of the boat in an expansive, swelling sea illuminated only by these same stars.
This stunning full-page spread on pages 248-9 is the most widely reproduced image of Bui’s book. It represents the freedom and relief Bố—and the family—feel as he begins the more promising future, towards which the stars point them. But Bui also depicts Bố looking up at these stars alone because he, as the boat’s substitute pilot, was the one to make this future possible for his family and the others on the boat.
Themes
The next morning, the women wash everyone’s clothes, but realize that someone has accidentally peed in the water. Má treats Bích’s infected hand with ocean water.
Although these trials are uncomfortable and unsanitary, fortunately, they are nothing compared to what the family has just endured.
Themes
Finally, the men above deck see land, and Má makes the children lemonade “to celebrate.” Bố realizes that local fishermen have approached them to guide them ashore, and the men light a lantern to communicate with them. Everyone anxiously prepares to land, but then an oar strikes Bố and knocks him into the ocean. He is shocked at first, but manages to surface and realizes he needs to swim ashore. He does, and he tells the people waiting for him on the shore that he is from the boat in the distance. The boat arrives and its passengers disembark, while Bố offers the boat and some gold to a local man who reciprocates by inviting them to stay in his village, Merang.
As though surviving and escaping multiple wars and oppressive regimes was not enough, Bố faces yet another scare. Like many Vietnamese refugees, Bui and her family arrive in Malaysia without fully understanding where they are or what lies ahead for them. They are completely at the mercy of the people who receive them, and—unlike many refugees, both past and present—they are fortunate to be accommodated with grace. Still, the phenomena of boat-bound refugees was not limited to Việt Nam, and Bui certainly wants the reader to recall that many people in the 21st century still fall victim to the dangers that Bui and her family narrowly avoided.
Themes
About to give birth, Má goes to the hospital while Bố stays in the village with Lan, Bích, and Thi. In the morning, they befriend a local boy. But then, it is time for them to go to the Pulau Besar refugee camp, where Má is supposed to meet them. They spend the day traveling there by truck and boat.
Although Bui and her family have presumably reached freedom, their journey continues—the trials become lesser, but do not disappear, as Bui’s first chapters have already revealed. Some of the trials are even humorous—like Lan and Bích’s attempts to understand the Malay-speaking boy who offers them juice boxes. But the family also visibly struggles to make sense of their identities and understand what steps to take next, as their confused faces reveal while they are herded into the Pulau Besar camp with a huge crowd of other refugees. Of course, this crowd is also a reminder that their experience is not theirs alone.
Themes
