I've been meaning to tell you about Vietnamerica. GB Tran's autobiographical graphic novel dropped into my hands several months ago, but it's taken me some time to get through it. At a massive, hardcover 288 full-color pages, telling the story of a Vietnamese American family's epic journey, it's a beast of a book. And it's extraordinary. Here's a cool trailer for a book:



The book is a graphic memoir telling GB's amazing family saga. Beautifully drawn, and told with meticulous complexity and care, it's an amazing, intimate mix of personal discovery, family narrative and historical drama. Here's the official description from the book jacket:

GB Tran is a young Vietnamese American artist who grew up distant from (and largely indifferent to) his family's history. Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, he knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past--and to focus on their children's future. It was only in his late twenties that GB began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam for the first time and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind.

In this family saga played out in the shadow of history, GB uncovers the root of his father's remoteness and why his mother had remained in an often fractious marriage; why his grandfather had abandoned his own family to fight for the Viet Cong; why his grandmother had had an affair with a French soldier. GB learns that his parents had taken harrowing flight from Saigon during the final hours of the war not because they thought America was better but because they were afraid of what would happen if they stayed. They entered America--a foreign land they couldn't even imagine--where family connections dissolved and shared history was lost within a span of a single generation.

In telling his family's story, GB finds his own place in this saga of hardship and heroism. Vietnamerica is a visually stunning portrait of survival, escape, and reinvention--and of the gift of the American immigrants' dream, passed on to their children. Vietnamerica is an unforgettable story of family revelation and reconnection--and a new graphic-memoir classic.

It's great, worthwhile read. Sometimes shocking and disturbing, and other moments tender and uplifting, it's a story of the Vietnam War you've never quite seen before. And at the same time, a wholly American story. I really hope this book finds a place in classrooms. For more information about Vietnamerica, and to preview the book, go to GB Tran's blog here and the publisher's website here.