Family Style, a moving graphic novel proving that less is more

Graphic novels are not all superheroes in tights. Graphic novels are capable of teaching lessons, even those that are biographical or non-fiction. It’s important to remind yourself of those basic truths every once in a while. Family Style, Memories of an American from Vietnam is a powerful and moving graphic novel whose potentially unattractive topic matter (to some) is made palatable with the thing that binds us all: food.

We all eat. However, the vast majority of us will never have to flee a country on a boat that’s packed to the brim with other folks. Thien Pham is a graphic artist and comic book artist that’s created a biographical graphic novel that tells his journey to America via touchstone moments that were created by the food that he ate at the time. Every food in your life has had a defining moment too, if you think about it.

For example, I lived in Key West, Florida for a little bit. I was working for a radio station that was on the fast road to bankruptcy, but I didn’t know that fact at the time. In hindsight it was very obvious, however, I was young, naïve, and not listening to common sense. I also didn’t get paid much. It was because of this that I ate brown rice for most of my meals. I discovered that brown rice has more nutrients than white rice and if you add different cheeses to your brown rice you’re able to imagine that the dinner table is anywhere other than here. After two months the owner of the radio station, who lived in Ohio, had all of the mail forwarded to their home address and my long, brown rice dream was over. I prefer white rice now and will always associate brown rice with Key West.

Family Style tells a much grander story than that. The book opens with Thien recalling his very first memory, which wasn’t a scene per se, but rather a happening that was focused on food. A young, five-year-old boy (Thien) is on a slender, overcrowded boat with his family and others. That boat gets struck by a much larger boat, that thankfully takes its passengers onto theirs. This new, bigger ship also has food that they share with the families. Thien’s mother takes one of these riceballs and saves it for future snacking. This turns out to be a very prescient thing because shortly thereafter the ship is boarded by pirates.

Pirates is not an outdated term, it’s just a rather uncommon one. Any boat whose crew is intent on forcibly boarding another, with hostile or criminal intent is a pirate. They don’t have to operate in the Caribbean and Johnny Depp will most certainly not be one of them. The starkness that’s illustrated when the pirates board Thien’s ship is palatable and dire. You want to turn the black page quickly to see what happens but are terrified at the same time because of the manner in which the words are forecasting the story. It’s a stunning sequence of just over a dozen pages that demonstrates how awesome a graphic novel has the capacity to be.

Each chapter in Family Style is assigned a meal that the author associates with a time in his life. Bahn Cuon is when they’re living in the refugee camp. His mother had purchased a stall where she’d make and sell the food to other refugees. It was a huge risk because it involved using their family’s savings and then having to learn to make this culinary dish that she wasn’t familiar with. Ham and cheese croissant is when they started their American dream by opening up a shop. Rice and Fish shows Thien as an adult, working and then deciding to get his American citizenship so that he could vote.

The story in Family Style is moving and empowering. The art in Family Style compliments it in such an effective manner that you can’t imagine it being told any other way. It’s presented in classic comic strip rectangles. There are some pages where it’s one larger comic book rectangle and the aforementioned black pages that occur early in the graphic novel.

Had the story not been as succinctly presented it wouldn’t have worked with the art. Had the art been more realistic then it might not have conveyed as many emotions as it does. Family Style is a smart graphic novel that fills in many of the blanks but also lets your imagination plug in certain pieces. The combination is a graphic novel that tells an incredibly strong story but allows readers to feel it for themselves. It does this without coming off as too heavy, despite the fact that the underlying theme of survival and striving for a better life can be quite serious. There are numerous moments of levity that are common to any family, even if they haven’t traveled Thein’s path that make this a fabulous read for ages 12 and up.

Family Style: Memories of an American from Vietnam is by Thien Pham and is available on :01 First Second, an imprint of Roaring Brook Press, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishing Holdings Limited Partnership.

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