Luther College holds its Opening Convocation virtually on Monday night

Posted: Sun, Aug 30, 2020 1:26 PM

Decorah community members and Luther College students, faculty and staff are being invited to attend a special virtual Opening Convocation at 7:00 p.m. Monday. The live-streamed event will be shown at www.luther.edu/events.

The author of the book "The Best We Could Do," Thi Bui, will give the Opening Convocation address. Bui was born in Vietnam and came to the United States in 1978 as part of the "boat people" wave of refugees fleeing Southeast Asia at the end of the Vietnam War. "The Best We Could Do" is about all kinds of connections and divisions: between immigrants and their old and new communities, between parents and children, between people who are marginalized and those who are in power, and between people of different political ideologies."

The book is a graphic novel that uses visual images to tell the true story of her family's daring escape after the fall of South Vietnam in the 1970s, and the difficulties they faced building new lives for themselves as immigrants in the United States.