Family Style by Thien Pham (Level Up illustrator) is a moving, insightful graphic memoir that shares the Vietnamese refugee experience through food.
When Thien Pham was five years old, he and his family fled their homeland in Vietnam for Songkhla refugee camp in Thailand, where they waited for passage to the U.S. Pham doesn't remember much from that treacherous trip, but what he does remember is "the saltiness of the fish" and "the sweetness of the rice" in the rice ball his mother gave him. Pham's early life in the U.S., like that first trip to Thailand, wasn't easy. He struggled with assimilation and, later, with being "Vietnamese enough." Pham recalls these difficult seasons of his life along with more positive ones through the food he associates with them, including the ham and cheese croissant that led to his parents' bakery business, and the potato chips that marked the day when his family became "officially American."
These food memories are cyclical, beginning with Vietnamese dishes, like bánh cuốn, then moving to American ones, like steak and potatoes, and returning to the rice and fish from his first memory, showing the influence of both cultures on Pham's life, but also the struggle of feeling in-between cultures. Pham's impactful text is paired with evocative digital woodblock-style illustrations in panels outlined with a thick black line and arranged like a storyboard. The colors of the panels start with muted, sepia-like tones and move to more saturated ones, cleverly showing the passage of time. An enlightening and hopeful memoir. --Lana Barnes, freelance reviewer and proofreader