Author Guide ·
Books Written by
Bui spent over a decade training herself as an illustrator specifically to tell one story: her family’s escape from Vietnam and the difficult, unresolved relationship she had with her parents as a result of what that escape cost them. The result, The Best We Could Do, is now taught widely as one of the essential graphic memoirs of immigration and intergenerational trauma.
By Lisanne Swart · 2 books · Graphic Memoir · Updated August 2026
Graphic MemoirOn my shelf
The Best We Could Do
An illustrated memoir tracing Bui’s parents’ lives before and during the Vietnam War, their harrowing escape from Vietnam as refugees, and Bui’s own reckoning, as a new mother herself, with the difficult parenting she received growing up as a result of what her parents survived.
Bui began the project as oral history interviews with her parents for a graduate thesis and spent ten years teaching herself to draw comics specifically to tell this story visually — the book’s emotional power comes directly from that long, patient process of trying to actually understand her parents rather than just judge them.
Illustrated Children’s Book
A Different Pond
A picture book, written by Bao Phi and illustrated by Bui, about a Vietnamese-American father and son fishing before dawn to help feed their family, quietly touching on immigration, labor, and the Vietnam War’s long shadow.
A Caldecott Honor Book — Bui’s illustration work here shows the same warm, observational precision as her memoir, applied to a children’s audience without softening the underlying hardship.
