One of the central stories in GB Tran’s graphic memoir is the largely unresolved resentment that Tri Huu harbors toward his father, Huu Nghiep, for abandoning his family to join the Viet Minh. The Viet Minh was a nationalist organization founded in 1941 by communist leader Ho Chi Minh. The Viet Minh’s goal was to resist Japan’s occupation of Vietnam during World War II and France’s colonial authority. When Japan surrendered to the Allies in 1945, effectively ending World War II, the Viet Minh declared Vietnam an independent country, but France thwarted its sovereignty by attempting to regain control over its Indochinese colonies, a power they’d held since the late 1800s. The Viet Minh engaged in war with France from 1946 to 1954, eventually defeating the French, in a conflict known as the First Indochina War.

GB’s parents grew up during the First Indochina War and survived the subsequent years of the Second Indochina War, also known as the Vietnam War. At the 1954 Geneva Accords, Vietnam was divided, with Ho Chi Minh ruling the north in Hanoi and the US-backed regime controlling the south in Saigon. Fighting ensued for the next 20 years, and the US withdrew its troops in 1973.