Presentation Type
Oral/Paper Presentation
Abstract
Born in Vietnam in 1975, three months after the fall of Saigon and the establishment of the communist regime, Thi Bui experienced her first few years of life in a nation wrought with crisis and confusion. Bui’s graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, paints an intimate history of her family’s journey as refugees from Vietnam to America. She details a personal record of the traumas of displacement, concretizing a biproduct of war often overgeneralized. Through shape and color, Bui portrays a non-linear narrative of stories that are both connected and disconnected, blending where identity and heritage begin and end. In my paper, I explore Bui’s artistic portrayal of trauma for members of the Vietnamese Diaspora. Using the refugee repertoire literary theory, I address creative avenues opened by the post-memory generation of refugees to artistically stage new productions of memory. Finally, I examine how memory shapes identity for refugees and how art is used to resist the dehumanizing impact of traumatic histories. In The Best We Could Do, Bui suggests that looking back on collective, inherited, and personal trauma is crucial to understand identity and experience freedom.
Faculty Mentor
Brandi Kellett
Recommended Citation
Heslon, Ellie, "Painting the Past: Trauma and Identity in The Best We Could Do" (2025). Student Scholar Symposium. 5.
https://digitalcollections.lipscomb.edu/student_scholars_symposium/2025/Full_schedule/5
Included in
Asian American Studies Commons, South and Southeast Asian Languages and Societies Commons
Painting the Past: Trauma and Identity in The Best We Could Do
Born in Vietnam in 1975, three months after the fall of Saigon and the establishment of the communist regime, Thi Bui experienced her first few years of life in a nation wrought with crisis and confusion. Bui’s graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, paints an intimate history of her family’s journey as refugees from Vietnam to America. She details a personal record of the traumas of displacement, concretizing a biproduct of war often overgeneralized. Through shape and color, Bui portrays a non-linear narrative of stories that are both connected and disconnected, blending where identity and heritage begin and end. In my paper, I explore Bui’s artistic portrayal of trauma for members of the Vietnamese Diaspora. Using the refugee repertoire literary theory, I address creative avenues opened by the post-memory generation of refugees to artistically stage new productions of memory. Finally, I examine how memory shapes identity for refugees and how art is used to resist the dehumanizing impact of traumatic histories. In The Best We Could Do, Bui suggests that looking back on collective, inherited, and personal trauma is crucial to understand identity and experience freedom.