The Common Reading Program is on hiatus as of the 2022-23 academic year. Check this page for future updates!

Thi Bui and Lauren Markham One City One Book interview at the San Francisco Public Library

The Vietnam War Explained In 25 Minutes | Vietnam War Documentary

2021 Common Reading Program

The Common Reading Program is an opportunity for new students to engage in an academic experience with the PLU community. During New Student Orientation, incoming students will meet with a faculty member, a New Student Orientation Guide, and their peers to discuss the Common Reading book and learn strategies for academic success at PLU.

The 2021-2022 academic year Common Reading book will be the critically acclaimed graphic novel, The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui. In this timely and breathtaking memoir, Bui explores her experiences as a daughter of Vietnamese immigrants who escaped the fall of Saigon in 1975. Her book describes how she has come to understand her family’s history and her sometimes fraught relationship with her parents in light of who she has become as a daughter, wife, and a mother. Told in a graphic novel format, Bui explores the universal themes of immigration and migration, family, racism and discrimination, duty, and redemption as they relate to the modern-day Vietnamese Asian-American experience.

Discussion Guide

Follow the prepared reading and discussion guide for The Best We Could Do by Thi Bui

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Buy

Purchase the book through the LuteLocker online.

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Success

Use these academic strategies for success during the Common Reading Program.

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