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
Three days into her hospital stay, Má still has not given birth and insists on leaving to reunite with her family. Lan, Bích, and Thi are delighted when she returns, but everyone is hungry. However, Má manages to get the family more space and cooking supplies. They have photos taken, which turn them into “BOAT PEOPLE.” Bui includes the original photos: they show each of the family members holding up a sign with their name, “boat number,” birthdate, and date of arrival in Malaysia. Thi is too young to get her own photo, so Má holds Thi in her own.
Tirelessly dedicated to protecting her children, Má foregoes her own comfort, turning down the hospital to fight for her daughters in the camp. The photos Bui includes in the book are jarring, both because they put faces to the characters that readers have so far only seen as cartoons and because, at the same time, they are forced to hold up classificatory information—names, dates, boat numbers—that erase them of their individual stories in the eyes of the authorities who are charged with caring for and resettling them. Therefore Bui humanizes herself and her family for the reader at the same time as she shows how their conversion into “BOAT PEOPLE”—mere examples of a broader stereotype—deprives them of humanity.
Themes
When they arrive in March 1978, the Pulau Besar refugee camp has 3,000 people, and representatives come from different countries seeking to interview and resettle refugees. Má and Bố speculate about where they can and should try to move—they consider France (because they speak French) and America (because Má’s sisters already live there). People also “reinvented themselves” in the camp, marrying or adopting children, changing their names and ages. The kids see it like “a wonderful vacation […] an escape from regular life.” Bích even runs into an old friend, who shows up at the beach in a school uniform.
The refugee camp is an ambiguous place, where people wait for a foreign government to assign them a new life, and therefore it is profoundly depersonalizing. As Má and Bố’s conversation reveals, the possibilities before them are so dizzying and uncertain—but their own autonomy so limited—that it is difficult for them to do more than speculate. So people’s “reinvent[ion of] themselves” in the camp can be seen as a reaction to this ambiguity and loss of identity, a way of experimenting and trying on selves in a place that is completely discontinuous with their past and their future.
Themes
But Má worries about how she will raise her next baby—and Tâm is soon born in the camp with the help of a Malay midwife. Giving birth, Thi Bui muses, is a clear and focused effort, but gives way to “the rest of the child’s life—[which] is another story.”
Childbirth is like the family’s escape: it is a narrow goal that must be achieved to open up endless possibilities. Of course, this moment also recalls Bui giving birth in the first chapter, when pain, fear, and trauma were a means to an end—the better and freer future she could build for her son.
Themes
Life is difficult in the camp—the refugees have to find their own water, wood, and toilets out in the forest. Luckily, Thi’s family’s stay is brief. Má’s sister Ðào soon helps sponsor the family to move to the United States, and they buy plane tickets with the help of the Red Cross. The family gets checkups in Kuala Lumpur, but Bố’s shows a lung problem related to his old tuberculosis, so he has to wait in Malaysia while the rest of the family travels to their new home.
Luckily, the family already has connections that make their stay in the refugee camp short and comparatively comfortable. Bố runs into yet another roadblock, and is again forced to wait indefinitely while mysterious forces decide his fate. Although it is not explicit in the book, this probably ignites his worst fears—his new family is leaving him behind, just as his original one did in his youth.
Themes
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At the airport the next day, Má is the only refugee who speaks English, so she helps “about a hundred people” navigate the airport procedures and get onto their planes. Má tends to Tâm on their flight, and then they land in Los Angeles, where they chaotically rush to their connecting flight for Chicago. Ðào is waiting in Chicago, and Bố gets clearance to follow them—but actually misses his connection in Los Angeles, ends up in Alaska, and “spen[ds] his first night in America on a bench in the airport.” But he makes it to Chicago and finds the family in Indiana.
Although Má and her family were reduced to the status of “BOAT PEOPLE,” the same as everyone else and without unique identities, now her English education comes in handy, and it is her turn to be a hero. Bố’s first moments in the United States are much rougher than his family’s—and perhaps foreshadow the isolation he will experience in the coming years.
Themes
Ðào’s family has already spent three years in the United States, so they are more Americanized and start pressuring Thi’s family to follow in their footsteps. Má and Bố come across “a welfare program” that promises to give them classes leading to minimum-wage jobs—but they forget to select classes, since in Việt Nam school schedules are pre-set. Bích, Lan, and Thi go “to the local elementary school,” “the junior high,” and “day care,” respectively, where they all struggle to assimilate. Má and Bố succeed in their classes.
Although the kids feel isolated and ostracized immediately, forced to adjust to new expectations and a new language without any guidance, Má and Bố hit the ground running, taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves in order to rebuild their lives. Of course, they encounter some unexpected bumps, but their ability to choose their own classes in the United States clearly stands for the broader autonomy and freedom they achieve by immigrating.
Themes
Soon, more of Má’s family comes to Indiana, where and there are “now seventeen people in one house!” But Má and Bố cannot stand the cold weather, so they decide to move to California, where more family lives. Ðào and his family are angry that Thi’s family is leaving so soon, but Má insists that they “just need to make [their] own way.” The chapter closes with an illustration drawing of their small, snow-covered house in suburban Indiana.
“Seventeen people in one house” is comically overstuffed by American standards—indeed, it is an image stereotypically and often derisively associated with immigrants and the poor, and predicated on the notion that a nuclear family is “better” or more “American” than an extended one. But this is not actually what dissuades Má and Bố from staying in Indiana with their extended family—as many immigrants to latitudes further North probably know well, assimilation to weather is as much a challenge as assimilation to culture.
Themes
