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Many people, especially in their 20s, embark on long treks across various regions of the world in search of something.... adventure? home? revelation? identity? In the case of Andrew Pham, his trip by bicycle across Vietnam involves all of the above. His family escaped from Vietnam on a rickety boat after the fall of Saigon, and, after several years in a refugee camp in Indonesia, immigrated to the United States. Twenty-odd years later, Andrew returns to Vietnam, now an adult on his own and as not only a Vietnamese but a Vietnamese-American. They hyphen between those two identities is the axis on which much of his journey of self-discovery turns. What makes this book so powerful is that we are not reading the account of a developing country by a completely removed outsider. Instead, Andrew weaves his own family's traumatic past in with his current adventures. As he comments on himself, he is both insider and outsider.
I really appreciated his descriptions of the clash of his American "wealth" as it stands in stark contrast to the poverty of most of Vietnam. He openly talks about his discomforts, his confusions, his exasperations, his hopes, his disappointments... everything. We realize as his trip progresses and the story of his family's life unfolds, that there is a deep well of pain not only inside of him but perhaps inside of Vietnam's national identity as a whole that aches to be healed.
Also, Pham's writing is fantastic. It is rich in descriptive imagery, and he takes the use of active verbs to an entirely new level. I want to pull some of his paragraphs to use with my seniors next fall when I am teaching them how to use active verbs effectively in their college essays. I'll leave you with a taste: "After Nha Trang, the land dries up. The sky hurts with a whispering blue. The air chafes, a marine tinge, rough on its hot grainy edge. Down by the strung-out coast, the sea lies open, three shades deeper than the bright above. The road is black and broad, curving round sandstone mountains and cutting straight through the flat beige stretches. Suong rong -- dragon bones, squatty Vietnamese cacti -- cast the vast empty into a shallow prickly graveyard. They say dragons came here to die. The land scorched itself in sorrow over the great beasts' passing" (p. 335).
I really appreciated his descriptions of the clash of his American "wealth" as it stands in stark contrast to the poverty of most of Vietnam. He openly talks about his discomforts, his confusions, his exasperations, his hopes, his disappointments... everything. We realize as his trip progresses and the story of his family's life unfolds, that there is a deep well of pain not only inside of him but perhaps inside of Vietnam's national identity as a whole that aches to be healed.
Also, Pham's writing is fantastic. It is rich in descriptive imagery, and he takes the use of active verbs to an entirely new level. I want to pull some of his paragraphs to use with my seniors next fall when I am teaching them how to use active verbs effectively in their college essays. I'll leave you with a taste: "After Nha Trang, the land dries up. The sky hurts with a whispering blue. The air chafes, a marine tinge, rough on its hot grainy edge. Down by the strung-out coast, the sea lies open, three shades deeper than the bright above. The road is black and broad, curving round sandstone mountains and cutting straight through the flat beige stretches. Suong rong -- dragon bones, squatty Vietnamese cacti -- cast the vast empty into a shallow prickly graveyard. They say dragons came here to die. The land scorched itself in sorrow over the great beasts' passing" (p. 335).
