Camryn Sandoval

May 2021
Migration Literature
Final Paper Proposal
Option #3: Creative Piece + Critical Review

I plan on doing choice number four under option three for the final paper. I want
to translate a part of The Best We Could Do into a written form. I do believe that Bui’s
choice to create her work in the illustrated form adds a lot of depth to the text. We are
able to see things that might not be able to be imagined without the help of the graphic
aspect of the novel. However, I think there is something that is lost by not having a lot of
text to work with for each scene. My paper will be a translation of the graphic novel to
an expanded form, written text. I will add in details, and dialogue to fill in gaps that I
felt were present while I was reading. Since there is limited dialogue between the
characters, I plan to work on giving them a voice and expanding upon this scene to make
it not feel so fast. I feel that a weakness of a graphic novel is that each moment is
passing, fleeting into the next set of images which lie just next to them. By expanding
upon, and adding a voice to each character I believe it will help us further understand
the thought processes and emotions of each character in a given moment. I plan to write
out the scene when Bui and her family are traveling on the boat. I want to focus on Thi,
and her siblings, and the feelings they must have internalized during this trip. The
children were below deck with their mom, and mostly quiet in Bui’s graphic novel which
focused on the essentials of traveling. Bui’s description focused on her father’s
experience in navigating the boat, and ensuring the families arrived safely. What I am
going to aim to do is find Thi, and her siblings thoughts and feelings throughout this trip
which we don’t get to see during this journey. I will start this storytelling from their
perspective on page 233 of Bui’s novel, and end it on page 253 when they begin their
celebration of finding land. While this is about 20 pages of content, which will be
compressed to about 4 pages of writing, I think it’s a good amount of text to work with
because my assignment is going to focus only on the perspective of the children, and
have the struggles of Bo navigating the trip on the back burner. I think my creative piece
will raise the question of children’s lost voice through migration. The emotions of the
kids seem to be an unimportant factor in this journey giving way to the success of their
trip. I haven’t found sources yet, but I plan to find contextual sources about children in
migration and hopefully they can help support the idea that my rewriting of Bui’s
journey shows things that get lost amongst the turmoil.
One thing I am struggling with is giving the characters a voice. There isn’t really
much dialogue between the characters throughout the novel, so it is hard to know how
they would talk or what they would say. However, I think providing these characters
with a voice is going to be really interesting and impactful to deepening the impact and
ability of the reader to become a part of that world. We are able to see the situation, but
we can’t always hear it, since the text is limited in a graphic novel. The second thing I am
struggling with is staying true to the story that Bui has written, but still adding in an
immense amount of detail. I worry that as I am expanding this text into a long form text
as opposed to the graphic novel, I might change the meaning. I want to try to include a
lot of details from her drawings, and add dialogue, while still staying true to the reality
of her journey. I am aware that since this is fictitious dialogue that I am adding, it will
not be exactly right, but I want to make sure I am not changing her message with my
added text. One question I have about this, is should I assume that my reader is seeing
the graphic novel as well as my text? Will these two things work together, or should my
Camryn Sandoval
May 2021
Migration Literature
Final Paper Proposal
text cover everything that is shown in the pages of the graphic novel and then some?
Should text be able to stand independently from Bui’s? If so, should I include her text
bubbles into my paper? I think if I am assuming that my paper stands completely
independently, then I need to include details describing her images, her small amount of
text, and then surround it with my own added ideas of detail and dialogue.