Review: Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam by Thien Pham.
First Second, June 2023. 235 p. ill. ISBN 9781250809711 (h/c), $25.99.
Reviewed July 2024
by Lisa Rand, Reference and Instruction Librarian, Penn State Lehigh Valley, lmr6334@psu.edu
In Family Style, author Thien Pham has created a visually striking memoir that conveys a hopeful story. Over eight chapters with food-related titles, meals serve as cultural touchpoints, elements to organize a story, and vessels of sensory memories.
An Oakland-based comic artist, graphic novelist, and educator, Pham moved to the United States from Vietnam as a young child in the 1970s. The book opens with the intensity of ocean waves and worried expressions on the faces of a boat’s passengers; danger is present, but so is reassurance. Throughout the days in a refugee camp and early days of resettlement, Pham depicts the challenges of immigration alongside the joyful moments of everyday life in a loving family. One visually effective example is the use of speech bubbles with black dashes and only one recognizable word to convey the difficulty of learning a new language in a strange country. The story is both culturally specific and highly relatable. Newcomers and children of immigrants from other places will recognize the desire to make a better life, the challenges of being an outsider, and the need for community.
Pham’s digital artwork uses a palette of muted earthy colors. People are drawn with cartoonish faces and readily recognizable, relatable facial expressions. Readers can see when a young Thien is embarrassed or when parents are tired after a long day of work. Most pages feature a spread of six-panel (3×2) grids, with single-panel pages to provide a different perspective or highlight a scene.
A beautiful contribution to the graphic memoir genre, Family Style gives voice to an underrepresented Asian-American experience. This graphic novel is highly recommended for academic libraries, teen and young adult comics collections in high school and public libraries, and community-based art libraries serving diverse populations.
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