Book in Common

Community Read Challenge 1

Join the Book in Common Community Read Challenge in March and read Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do in preparation for the author’s visit to campus on April 5.

By March 20
  1. Get your copy(opens in new window) of The Best We Could Do.
  2. Get your ticket(opens in new window) for the Book in Common lecture by Thi Bui, Wednesday, April 5 at 7:30 p.m. at Laxson Auditorium ($20 for the general public, free for Chico State and Butte College students).
  3. Watch a recorded fall ’22 Book in Common talk(opens in new window) featuring
    1. "HMoob Studies in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies," panel discussion with Assistant Professor Choua Xiong (Chico State), PhD student Mai Neng Vang (UW Madison), and Lecturer Chong A. Moua (UW Madison).
    2. "'The Best ‘We’ Could Do': Memory, Genocide, and the Ethics of Identity," with Professor Jonathan H. X. Lee (San Francisco State)

Register to participate in book discussions(opens in new window) on March 22 and 29 (11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. in ARTS 227). The first fifteen people to register will receive a free copy of the book!

Learn more about the historical context of Bui’s memoir—the Vietnam War and its aftermath—by attending a free University Film Series screening of Boat People (1982), introduced by Professor William Nitzky (Anthropology), on March 6 at 6:00 p.m. in AYRS 106.

Consider participating in the “Meanings of Home(opens in new window)” art exhibition (April 4–14, to coincide with the author’s visit to campus). To participate, pick up a template and instructions(opens in new window) from locations across campus, and return completed art by March 21.

Thi Bui, the 2022–23 Book in Common author, is a Vietnamese American cartoonist whose work seeks to make sense of the stories that history leaves behind. Bui’s debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do, is the story of her family in the years before, during, and after the Vietnam War. It was selected for an American Book Award, a National Book Critics Circle finalist, and was an Eisner Award finalist. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen describes Bui’s memoir as “a book to break your heart and heal it.”