Author Guide · Graphic memoir
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In 2005 Thi Bui had never drawn a comic. She had just become a mother, she had hours of interviews with her parents about how they got the family out of Vietnam by boat in 1978, and she had questions she could not ask them to their faces. Twelve years later The Best We Could Do came out, drawn entirely by her, and it is now taught in schools and universities across the United States as one of the essential books on refugees and what war passes from parents to children.
By Lisanne Swart · 5 books · Female authors · Graphic memoir · 2017–2026 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Thi Bui has written and drawn one book of her own, the graphic memoir The Best We Could Do (2017), and illustrated four picture books by other writers, from the Caldecott Honor book A Different Pond (2017) to Ride / Đạp Xe (2026). Her second graphic book, about immigrant detention, is in progress. Below: all five, where to start, and what comes next.
Where to Start with Thi Bui
If you read only one
→ The Best We Could Do. Her memoir, and the book everything else on this page comes from.
If you are reading with a child
→ A Different Pond. A father, a son and a fishing trip before dawn, and a Caldecott Honor.
If you want something lighter
→ Chicken of the Sea. Pirate chickens, made by two writers and their sons.
If you want the newest
→ Ride / Đạp Xe. Learning to ride a bike, in English and Vietnamese.
All 5 Thi Bui Books, in Order
The Best We Could Do
Start hereOn my shelfAn Illustrated Memoir
It opens in a New York hospital, with Bui giving birth to her son and her mother at her side, and asks a question she could not put to her parents directly: what did they go through, and what did it do to them as parents? From there she goes back through their childhoods in colonial and wartime Vietnam, the war itself, and the night in 1978 when the family left by boat for a refugee camp in Malaysia, with Bui aged three. It is drawn in ink with a single rust-red wash, and published by Abrams ComicArts in March 2017.
Bui began the project as interviews with her parents and spent more than a decade 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.
— LisanneA Different Pond
Written by the poet Bao Phi from his own childhood in Minneapolis: before dawn, a Vietnamese American boy and his father go fishing, not for sport but to put dinner on the table, before the father goes to his second job. Between casts the father mentions a different pond, in Vietnam, and a war the boy does not yet understand. Bui drew it in the same quiet, observant line as her memoir, at the scale of a picture 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.
— LisanneChicken of the Sea
A family book in every sense: written by the novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen and his five-year-old son Ellison, and illustrated by Bui with her teenage son Hien. A flock of chickens on a farm decide they would rather be pirates, and set sail. Published by McSweeney’s.
Finding Papa
Written by Angela Pham Krans: a girl named Mai and her mother leave their village in Vietnam to follow her father, who went ahead to find them a new home, crossing the sea by boat. A game the girl and her father played, “crocodile chomp”, carries the story to their reunion in America. Like Bui, the author drew on her own family’s emigration from Vietnam.
Ride / Đạp Xe
NewestBui’s second picture book with Bao Phi, nine years after A Different Pond, published in English and Vietnamese on 1 August 2026. Two children learn to ride a bicycle in parallel stories, one taught by a father in blue tones and English, the other by a mother in yellow and sepia and Vietnamese, until the last page shows how the father learned from his own mother.
What Thi Bui Is Working On Now
A second graphic book, Nowhereland. It is a long work of graphic nonfiction, around three hundred pages, about immigrant detention in the United States: the laws and systems behind it, the creation of ICE after 9/11, and the people caught inside it, connecting Asian American, Latinx and African American histories. In 2025 it received a Creative Capital Award.
No publication date has been announced. Until then, The Best We Could Do is her only book-length work as author, and the picture books are where to find her drawing.
The years · 1975–2026
Quick facts about Thi Bui
- Known for
- The Best We Could Do, her graphic memoir about her family and their journey from Vietnam
- 1975
- Born in Saigon, Vietnam
- 1978
- Arrives in the US as a refugee
- 2005
- Begins The Best We Could Do
- 2017
- The Best We Could Do and A Different Pond
- 2026
- Ride, with Bao Phi
- Teaching
- Co-founded Oakland International High School; teaches in the MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts
- Awards
- American Book Award; finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and an Eisner; Caldecott Honor for A Different Pond
- In progress
- Nowhereland, graphic nonfiction on immigrant detention
- Lives
- New Orleans
The shaded stretch is the twelve years she spent on The Best We Could Do.
How Thi Bui Draws
Ink and one colour. The Best We Could Do is drawn in black ink with a single rust-red wash. It gives the book the feel of an old photograph and keeps the eye on faces, which is where the story is.
The parents tell their own story. Much of the memoir is built from what her mother and father told her, so whole sections are in their voices, with Bui listening. She does not resolve what she hears into a verdict. Like Ocean Vuong, she writes towards a Vietnamese parent the reader can understand without forgiving everything.
In the picture books, she leaves space. Her illustrations for other writers are spare: soft colour, minimal lines, faces that say more than the text. Children’s reviewers keep using the same word for them, quiet.
Watch
Thi Bui in conversation with Viet Thanh Nguyen
The 2022 Big Read keynote, recorded over Zoom for the Pennington Public Library: Bui talks with the novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, with whom she made Chicken of the Sea, about The Best We Could Do, her parents, and starting a graphic memoir without ever having drawn a comic, followed by questions from readers.
Frequently asked questions about Thi Bui’s books
How many books has Thi Bui written or illustrated?
Five. She wrote and drew the graphic memoir The Best We Could Do (2017), and illustrated four picture books by other writers: A Different Pond (2017) and Ride / Đạp Xe (2026) by Bao Phi, Chicken of the Sea (2019) by Viet Thanh Nguyen and Ellison Nguyen, and Finding Papa (2023) by Angela Pham Krans.
What is the best Thi Bui book to start with?
The Best We Could Do. It is her major work and the book she is best known for, tracing her family’s escape from Vietnam and her relationship with her parents.
Is The Best We Could Do a true story?
Yes. It is a memoir about Bui’s own family: her parents’ lives in Vietnam before and during the war, their escape by boat in 1978 when she was three, their first years in the United States, and her own experience of becoming a mother.
How long did it take Thi Bui to make The Best We Could Do?
About twelve years. She began in 2005 without ever having drawn a comic, built the story from interviews with her parents, taught herself to draw it, and the book was published in 2017.
What awards has The Best We Could Do won?
An American Book Award. It was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in autobiography and for an Eisner Award, and Bill Gates picked it as one of his five favourite books of 2017.
Did A Different Pond win the Caldecott Medal?
It won a Caldecott Honor in 2018, the runner-up distinction to the Caldecott Medal, for Bui’s illustrations. It was written by Bao Phi.
Is Thi Bui writing a new book?
Yes. She is working on Nowhereland, a graphic nonfiction book about immigrant detention in the United States, which received a Creative Capital Award in 2025. No publication date has been announced.
What did Thi Bui do before The Best We Could Do?
She was a teacher. She helped found Oakland International High School, a public high school for recently arrived immigrant students in California, and taught there, and she later joined the faculty of the MFA in Comics at California College of the Arts.
Footnotes
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all hers.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Family is now something I have created — and not just something I was born into.”
— Thi Bui, The Best We Could Do (2017)
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