Thi Bui

Thi Bui (born 1975) is a Vietnam-born American graphic novelist and illustrator. She is most known for her illustrated memoir The Best We Could Do. Thi Bui was born in what was then Saigon, Vietnam, three months before the Fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War. She is one of six children; two older siblings passed away before her birth. She and her family were part of the wave of "boat people" from Southeast Asia, arriving at a refugee camp in Malaysia. They were eventually granted asylum in the United States and migrated there in 1978.

Bui has worked as a school teacher for years, having worked in schools in New York City and Oakland. She was one of the founders of Oakland International High School in Oakland, California, the first public high school in California for recent immigrants and English learners. There, she worked as an art and digital media teacher. Since 2015, she has been a faculty member of the MFA in Comics program at the California College of the Arts. Before her career as an illustrator, she had never had any experience with drawing.

The range of Bui's work often focuses on political and social issues. In 2017, Bui published her first graphic novel, The Best We Could Do, chronicling the life of her refugee parents and siblings' life in Vietnam before their escape after the Vietnam War and their eventual migration to the United States. The book delves into themes of immigration, war, and intergenerational trauma. She worked on the novel for over a decade.

The book received critical acclaim and several accolades, including the National Book Critics Circle and American Book Award. It was also a finalist for the Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work category, among others. In 2017, it made Bill Gates' top five book list. In addition, from 2017 to 2018, it was selected as UCLA's Common Book and was incorporated into its undergraduate program.

The same year, A Different Pond was published as a children's picture book. She worked on the book as an illustrator and collaborated with spoken word artist and writer Bao Phi for the project. A Different Pond went on to win the Caldecott Honor for illustration.

In 2019, she teamed up with acclaimed novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen for a new picture book titled Chicken of the Sea. Nguyen and Bui collaborated with their sons to create the story, with Nguyen and his son Ellison as writers and Bui and her son Hien as illustrators.

Since her debut work, she has written and illustrated short-form comics about many domestic political issues within the Southeast Asian community. Her next book, Nowhereland, will focus on the incarceration and deportation of Southeast Asian people in the United States. She is also working on a science fiction story about climate change in Vietnam and poorer countries.