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Winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Winner of the Whiting Writers' Award
A Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Book of the Year
Catfish and Mandala is the story of an American odyssey―a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam―made by a young Vietnamese-American man in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland.
Andrew X. Pham was born in Vietnam and raised in California. His father had been a POW of the Vietcong; his family came to America as "boat people." Following the suicide of his sister, Pham quit his job, sold all of his possessions, and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert, around a thousand-mile loop from Narita to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon, where he finds "nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness." In Vietnam, he's taken for Japanese or Korean by his countrymen, except, of course, by his relatives, who doubt that as a Vietnamese he has the stamina to complete his journey ("Only Westerners can do it"); and in the United States he's considered anything but American. A vibrant, picaresque memoir written with narrative flair and an eye-opening sense of adventure, Catfish and Mandala is an unforgettable search for cultural identity.
- Sales Rank: #56685 in Books
- Published on: 2000-09-02
- Released on: 2000-09-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.21" h x .98" w x 5.46" l, .72 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 352 pages
- Great book!
Amazon.com Review
A great memoirist can burnish even an ordinary childhood into something bright--see, for instance, Annie Dillard's An American Childhood. So what about a really good writer with access to a dramatic and little-documented story? This is the case with Catfish and Mandala, Vietnamese American Andrew X. Pham's captivating first book, which delves fearlessly into questions of home, family, and identity. The son of Vietnamese parents who suffered terribly during the Vietnam War and brought their family to America when he was 10, Pham, on the cusp of his 30s, defied his parents' conservative hopes for him and his engineering career by becoming a poorly paid freelance writer. After the suicide of his sister, he set off on an even riskier path to travel some of the world on his bicycle. In the grueling, enlightening year that followed, he pedaled through Mexico, the American West Coast, Japan, and finally his far-off first land, Vietnam.
The story, with some of a mandala's repeated symbolic motifs, works on several levels at once. It is an exploration into the meaning of home, a descriptive travelogue, and an intimate look at the Vietnamese immigrant experience. There are beautifully illuminated flashbacks to the experience of fleeing Vietnam and to an earlier, more innocent childhood. While Pham's stern father, a survivor of Vietcong death camps, regrets that Pham has not been a respectful Vietnamese son, he also reveals that he wishes he himself had been more "American" for his kids, that he had "taken [them] camping." Catfish and Mandala is a book of double-edged truths, and it would make a fascinating study even in less able hands. In those of the adventurous, unsentimental Pham, it is an irresistible story. --Maria Dolan
From Publishers Weekly
In narrating his search for his roots, Vietnamese-American and first-time author Pham alternates between two story lines. The first, which begins in war-torn Vietnam, chronicles the author's hair-raising escape to the U.S. as an adolescent in 1977 and his family's subsequent and somewhat troubled life in California. The second recounts his return to Vietnam almost two decades later as an Americanized but culturally confused young man. Uncertain if his trip is a "pilgrimage or a farce," Pham pedals his bike the length of his native country, all the while confronting the guilt he feels as a successful Viet-kieu (Vietnamese expatriate) and as a survivor of his older sister Chai, whose isolation in America and eventual suicide he did little to prevent. Flipping between the two story lines, Pham elucidates his main dilemma: he's an outsider in both America and VietnamAin the former for being Vietnamese, and the latter for being Viet-kieu. Aside from a weakness for hyphenated compounds like "people-thick" and "passion-rich," Pham's prose is fluid and fast, navigating deftly through time and space. Wonderful passages describe the magical qualities of catfish stew, the gruesome preparation of "gaping fish" (a fish is seared briefly in oil with its head sticking out, but is supposedly still alive when served), the furious flow of traffic in Ho Chi Minh City and his exasperating confrontations with gangsters, drunken soldiers and corrupt bureaucrats. In writing a sensitive, revealing book about cultural identity, Pham also succeeds in creating an exciting adventure story. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
As a child, Pham fled Vietnam with his family and settled in California. Here he recounts his return--by bicycle, as he wheels up the West Coast, boards a plane, and finds himself at the airport in Saigon, cursing out the "nitwits in flip-flops" who wrecked his bike. Clearly, this is no sentimental journey; Pham's is a soul divided. He's a contentious guide, but the journey is heartrending and invaluable. (LJ 10/1/99)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Interesting perspective to a very adventurous journey
By Cobracommand
This was a great story I had not read a book for awhile and during my Vietnam War summer course we were assigned this reading. It was a quick read for me as I got into the book very fast. The story is interesting and gives a unique perspective to a very adventurous return to war torn country in search of origin. If you want to read about the Vietnam war and its lasting effects on the Vietnamese I would check this book out.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A home revisited.
By Amazon Customer
An Pham's picaresque adventure of rediscovery is a search, not only for the ghosts of a homeland lost but also for a self contained ephemeral, perhaps incipient, a search for meaning, a place in a complex geography of hearts and homes. Having recently ttyl8r Lynn traveled Vietnam, from Saigon to Hanoi with a side trip to Cambodia, much of the story had the ring of the somewhat familiar. Still, the Vietnam Pham reveals in this story is one I could never see, could not hope to glimpse without a tour guide of the searching soul. Vietnam is a beautiful, bustling, confusing and contradictory place. The soul of the Vietnamese emigrant returning, even more so.
This s book is a very good read. Hours spent without h a soul, so different from ones daily American life yet so achingly familiar in it's longing to find a home, a familiar face, a sense of belonging rewards beyond measure. I highly recommend commend this book and a visit to it's source.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Mesmerizing and extremely well-crafted!
By Eduardo Neecha
Very impressive:
1. Interesting subject matter: Vietnam and Vietnamese-Americans, past and present
2. Lively writing style: flowing, vivid and often poetic, though it does sometimes briefly lurch into Henry Miller-esque indulgence/floridity, and
3. Narrative structure: a travelogue intercut with flashbacks to childhood memories of living in Vietnam, fleeing Vietnam, transitioning to life in the US; reconstructed accounts of his father's time at a Communist "re-education camp" and his mother's shady side business up to the end of the war, and the cultural tensions and transformations within his immediate and extended family of Vietnamese immigrants living in the US.
It all blends together into a rich and absorbing novel that I couldn't put down, but finished in one weekend.
The narrative structure of this book is highly effective in creating suspense and tension, such that it could easily be turned into a screenplay and a film; it is probable that the author and/or editor had that in mind all along. Therefore it's easy to imagine that a fair number of embellishments and poetic liberties have likely been taken in order to attract and maintain reader interest. Not exactly unheard of in the fast-growing memoir genre, btw.
It is worth noting that Mr. Pham's journey to Vietnam probably happened sometime in the early to mid 1990s, as the book was published only in 1999. I can say that having visited Vietnam twice in the last five months (2010-2011) and found the country to be not quite as dire as he describes as far as glaring poverty, corruption, prostitution, etc. are concerned. Having talked with many Viet Kieu (Vietnamese who live or grew up outside of Vietnam but come back to visit or work), it is clear however that white Western tourists are indeed treated very differently (i.e. much better) by the local population than the Viet Kieu who often trigger greed, envy and hostility especially outside of the two main cities, Saigon and Hanoi.
All in all, there is plenty here to keep any reader turning pages---not just Vietnamese or Vietnamese-American readers. I look forward to reading Mr. Pham's newest book as well.
4 and 1/2 stars.
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