The Best We Could Do

Wonderful memoir of the author's childhood and her parents' lives prior to their emigration from Vietnam to the United States. Bui spent many years figuring out the best way to ask about her parents' youth and how to tell this story, as it came with so much baggage related to her parents' often-harrowing experiences as Vietnam fought for its independence from the French, then fought North against South, and through what Americans know as the Vietnam War and the continuation of war after the U.S. troops withdrew ... up until the family finally made its way to Cambodia as refugees. The book is beautifully illustrated and helped me to understand much more about Vietnamese history than I knew.

TW: stillbirth, infant death, racial slurs, violence/murder related to war