Please join the city of San Francisco’s One City One Book program and pick up the 2017 award-winning graphic novel by Thi Bui about the journey her Vietnamese family experienced in coming to the USA. We can’t put this one down!

San Francisco Public Library is excited to announce that the 14th Annual One City One Book selection is The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui.

In what Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen calls “a book to break your heart and heal it,” The Best We Could Doexplores the anguish of immigration and the lasting effects that displacement has on a child. Thi Bui documents her family’s daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves in America. The Best We Could Do is a haunting memoir about the search for a better future and a longing for a simpler past. As the child of a country and a war she can’t remember, Bui’s dreamlike artwork brings to life her journey to understanding her own identity in a way that only comics can.

Since the publication of the hardcover in March 2017, The Best We Could Do has made a place for itself in the graphic novel canon and has received 5 starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Library Journal, School Library Journal, and Shelf Awareness. It was also nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in the autobiography category and made it onto over thirty “Best of 2017” lists everywhere from the Washington Post to Entertainment Weekly. Thi Bui is a rising star in the comics and literary world, and her debut work is not to be missed.

Copies of The Best We Could Do are featured in all San Francisco libraries and at bookstores around the city.

Beginning October 2018, join book discussions, view themed exhibits, attend author talks and participate in many other One City One Book events. Check out the One City One Book 2018 Program Guide (PDF 2M)