What Is The Theme Of The Best We Could Do By Ti Bui

To what extent does Thi Bui portray the resilience of her family’s struggle with the emphasis on orange hue in The Best We Could Do?

Thi Bui slept on a ship for multiple days not knowing if they could be thrown in jail at any moment just to reach a new life in a different country. Her family did their best in all moments naming the graphic novel The Best We Could by Thi Bui. The Best We Could Do is a memoir written about her family and their story. The graphic novel is created in place for readers to understand the life of a refugee seeking an ultimate goal. The book jumps from her narrating the present day to the Vietnam War. Thi pictured her story using many colors to portray her story in the book. However, Thi used the color orange specifically

Thi Bui grew up in a household with a difficult past among her family. Her father, Bo, lived a past with war in his community, divorce, and poor life quality (before going to school). To find a better understanding of her own identity, she explored her father’s history. The panel has a black border symmetrical to the page with a gutter on all 4 sides of the rectangular shape. The panel is stretched from top to bottom. The movement and shape create a different perception of time within the panel. The panel pictures Bo sitting on a chair with a table past the chair deeper into the panel facing the right side of the page with Bo staring into the right border. Bo has a black-shaded texture with the implied meaning of resentment. The shadow of Bo sitting on the chair extends away from him closer to the bottom of the panel emphasizing the shadow. There is a glass door looking through a painted orange hue wall with curtains on each side. The orange hue is painted all across the panel with small shades of white within it. The caption at the bottom of the panel reads I had no idea that the terror I felt was only the long shadow of his own. (Bui 129 panel 2). When Thi

The panel has a border of black around it. The panel shows a chessboard. Orange and black contrast of colors used in the panel. The chessboard is on a table with a hand moving pieces of chess. Captions in the panel state I still have the chessboard my father made when I was a kid, and the wooden set of pieces we played with. Caption in the middle of the page stating revisiting this game of war and strategy, I think about how none of the Vietnamese people in that video have a name or a voice. In the bottom right captions saying My grandparents, my parents, my sisters, and me, -we weren’t any of the pieces on the chessboard. (Bui 185) Thi writes her books with captions, some with panels. This panel shows a chessboard with different uses. She continues to talk about the chessboard and how it's a game of war and strategy, however, she says her family was not any piece of the chessboard. They all have a place in society like the chessboard but her family didn’t fit. Thi used an ineffable experience like the chessboard to explain how her family did not fit in Vietnamese society. Thi pictures the panel with orange and black colors leaving no room for white negative space. What seems to be a common theme with the color orange is that when mentioned it is her family or herself as a difference. The struggles Thi Bui’s family endures are explained in pictures due to their grief not being able to be