UCSB Reads Author Talk by Thi Bui
Location: UCSB Campbell Hall.
A free lecture and book-signing by Thi Bui, author of the UCSB Reads 2019 selection The Best We Could Do. UCSB Library is pleased to partner with UCSB Alumni to offer this author talk as the kick-off event for All Gaucho Reunion 2019.
The Best We Could Do is a memoir written in the form of a comic book, in the tradition of Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Thi Bui chronicles generations of her family history in Vietnam, including her birth during the final months of the Vietnam War and her parents’ escape to, and early years in, the United States. The story is rendered in flashbacks from Bui’s current life as a new mother in California. Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen has described The Best We Could Do as a “compelling memoir” that will “break your heart and heal it.”
A Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator, Bui teaches in the MFA in Comics Program at the California College of the Arts. The Best We Could Do was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle and Eisner awards, and was selected for many “Best of 2017” book lists. Bui is currently researching and drawing a work of graphic nonfiction about how Asian American Pacific Islanders are impacted by detention and deportation.
No tickets needed; seats are on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 6:50pm.
