Thien Pham’s graphic memoir is so much more than a refugee story. While he depicts plenty of struggle in the pages of Family Style: Memories of an American From Vietnam (First Second, June 20), it’s his childlike zest for life that lifts this tale of his family’s flight from war in their home country when the author was 5 years old and their resettlement in California.

The result is “an American story to savor,” according to our review, with a strong focus on Pham’s vivid food memories, no doubt cultivated by his parents’ own appreciation for life and its delights. Pham, an author, illustrator, and educator, spoke with Kirkus via Zoom from the California school where he teaches. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

I saw from your Instagram that you’ve been sharing parts of this book on your feed for years now. What was it like to document your progress on Family Style in this way?

Actually, it wasn’t that I was documenting the process of making this book, I was just drawing and sharing comics online during the pandemic. I never knew that this book was going to be published.

Throughout the pandemic, I would go check up on my parents, and we had the time to sit and talk. I was also finally old enough to ask them about their memories about how we came to the United States. I never knew the full story.

As Asian immigrant parents, they tried to protect us kids from every hardship, acting like it was no big deal. But when they told me the full story during these talks that we had, I thought, What an amazing journey. You guys are heroes, leaving your country at 20 years old with kids. I started drawing the stories my parents told me.

I was prepared to tell this whole story on Instagram, but a friend of mine at First Second Books who had edited my books contacted me and said they’d like to publish it. There’s something special about holding a book, and publishers are discovering that. There’s a quality of holding that book, the love of the object that’s produced, even if the content is available online.

Speaking of your Instagram, it’s obvious to anyone who sees your feed that you love food. How did you land on food as a connecting thread for this book?

It was unintentional. One day while I was interviewing my mom, she asked me, “What do you remember?” I started telling her, “Not much.…You gave me the rice ball [on a boat while fleeing Vietnam], Russ made us that dinner [of steak and potatoes when we arrived in the United States].” I realized that all of my memories from that time were based on food.

That’s pretty much my life: If I remember anything about anybody, it’s the meal we had together. That’s why I love food, and it’s a love that was brought on by my parents. Growing up, we’d eat around the table or on the floor, with food spread out everywhere, and we’d have so much fun. Those were my most cherished memories.

When we’d have parties, my mom would never eat. She’d be busy serving everyone else and telling them to eat. At the end of the night, she’d eat what was left over. She loved eating the meat off the bones from a pot of pho. Nowadays, fancy pho restaurants include meat on the bone, but back then, those were the pieces you’d throw away. But I would sit with my mom all night, eating meat off the bones, and it was such a bonding moment.

You’ve been drawing food comics for years.

Early in my comics career, I got to review restaurants in comics form for East Bay Express [an Oakland weekly]. I loved doing it. Drawing food is one of the hardest things to do. A lot of food is just brown, a pile of goop that does not look appetizing. The textures and shine are hard to capture as drawings. I turned to Japanese manga, which do it so well.

Like Oishinbo?

Oishinbo changed my life! It’s black and white, super cartoony, with a food war [between a father and son who are competing to design the “ultimate menu” showcasing Japanese cuisine]. When they showcase a dish, though, it’s beautifully rendered. It looks amazing—it practically sparkles. That is the feeling you get when you’re at a restaurant and they present your dish. With this book, I wanted the food to look appetizing and tell a story through my memories.

What feelings came up for you as you were working on Family Style?

I felt overwhelmed with gratitude for my parents. When we’d have these conversations about their memories, my parents wouldn’t say things to get a reaction from me. They just spoke so matter-of-factly about facing pirates at sea, living in squalor at a refugee camp, struggling to rent a house.

All my memories of that time were so good. I don’t have memories of the struggle, because my parents protected me. We felt happy that we had made it, we had our family, and we were around our people. It was a tough life, but we were all together.

In the past, when my friends would say I should write my immigrant story, I never knew how to come at it, with me being the hero or the protagonist. When I wrote this book, I saw the heroes were my mom and dad. I don’t know where I’d be without my mom. She’s the reason why we survived and thrived in America.

The parts where you captured your childhood joys made me cry!

I homed in on these images—the magnet that I loved as a kid, making a homemade flashlight in the refugee camp, playing with bugs that the men in the camp would put on strings for us kids to have as pets—because I wanted to show how much comfort these things brought me.

I’ve been telling the magnet story for years. When I was a kid, I loved magnets so much. When I first came to America, I was feeling so alienated and couldn’t speak English. But I had one magnet, and once I figured out what to call it in English, I really wanted to learn the language to communicate and ask for more. Making things and putting words to them spurred my love for creativity.

What do you feel comics are able to convey better than work in other media?

If I hadn’t found the medium of comics and graphic novels, I would never be able to tell these stories. This is the only way I know how to tell the story.

When I was a kid, I was a very reluctant reader. The only thing I liked reading were comics. I was often told, “That’s not really reading.” But recently, at a library conference, someone who was attending told me, “One of my kids really loved your book. They loved the words, the pictures—they loved that story.” I thought about it, and it felt like that kid was me. When I write, I think about the reluctant reader, and I write to them. I write to the person who would read a graphic novel [or memoir] and get a lot out of it.

Hannah Bae is a Korean American writer, journalist, and illustrator and winner of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award.