The Best We Could Do - Love and Pain Through Generations

 

 

One of the most influential books in my life is The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan. I’m sure most of you know it, but for those that don’t it’s a multi generational story of Chinese Immigrants and their first generation American children, now grown to adults. It’s told through the perspective of our 4 main characters and their respective mothers weaving from childhood to adulthood and everywhere in-between showing the pain, love, miscommunication, and yearning for connection that can get lost between cultures.

 

I related to it deeply as generations of Black Americans can also vary so widely between years it can feel like the children are from different countries than their parents or grandparents. So much unspoken trauma, death, pain from being marginalized and having a system built against you, but yet not having the tools or words to communicate so you do…The Best You Can. For all the wounds it may leave behind, but also all the love it gives as well.

 

This graphic novel gave me a similar feeling. This time told from the perspective of a Vietnamese family, the author tells her family’s story of leaving the war behind  and how that silent pain weighed on the family as she and siblings grew up in America. 

 

It’s a beautiful and yet heartbreaking collection of stories that shows  you never truly know what some is going through, A Call for empathy. 

 

 

 

The art of the graphic novel also done by the author has this not quite solid pencil line work that adds to the reminiscing quality of the story. Characters grasping, trying to remember their stories that have all but blurred but the pain still leaves its scar. The color palette of orange, black, and beige give  this melancholy fall feel as we go from Father to Mother, to Grandparents seemingly caught between two periods. One where they have to hide from soldiers coming to collect them while bringing food for their parents, and another where they have to pick their kids up from piano lessons.

 

I highly recommend this book for all who are seeking to understand those came before us a little better.