American · b. 1968
Thi Bui is a Vietnamese American cartoonist, artist and teacher. She was born in Saigon in 1968 and came to the United States as a child after her family fled Vietnam by boat in 1978. She grew up in California, studied architecture at the University of California, Berkeley, and later earned an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College. She worked as a public school teacher in New York City for many years. Her first book, The Best We Could Do (2017), is a graphic memoir about her parents' lives in Vietnam, their escape, and her own experience of becoming a mother. It was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and is widely taught in courses on graphic memoir and refugee history. She later illustrated Ibtisam Barakat-related and other collaborative projects, including A Different Pond, a children's book written by Bao Phi. Her work draws attention to refugee families and the stories they carry.