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).

We have a lot of work to do on race in America. I'm exhausted just thinking about it, but as a white-as-you-can-get-without-bleach American I have to at least show up to read books like these. Because Americans of color and other ethnicities have to live through the brutality of it every day of their lives.

This book added more fuel to a fire I had to bike across Vietnam. (Someday, when I'm gray.) However Catfish and Mandala is more than cultural travelogue. Mr. Pham so eloquently ponders the complicated experience of never quite finding "home". An immigrant to the United States when he was a child, a trip to his parents' homeland was meant to be a reconnection with his roots. Sadly, a need for belonging felt keenly during his transplanted American childhood is never fully satisfied upon his return to Vietnam.

In my tiny opinion, Mr. Pham is so unfairly blessed with fearless talent and rebellious intellect that he might be too smart for his own good. He's also biked across Mexico and Japan, built his own home by hand, pursued a dual degree in aerospace engineering along with his Masters degree in writing, and published a cookbook. A mind such as his, endlessly examines the complex cultural ironies and shades of meaning in the smallest details. It made for a bittersweet read and his view of the world is utterly unique.

After months of guilt over not making better progress in this book, I'm calling it quits on "Catfish and Mandala". There are two stories in this book, and like a lot of books with two story lines, one is a great read and the other feels like a slog through the mud.

In "Catfish and Mandala", there is a story about the book's author, a self-centered young adult going on a "rebel's" journey to his homeland of Vietnam. This story was far too bitter and narcissistic to be enjoyable. The author really needs to do some deep soul searching, and not just the surface level plumbs represented in this book. As a reader, I really don't care that the author ran away from home on his bike to another country as a young adult while trying to pacify the lack of control he felt as a child, and the author does nothing to bring me to the point of caring.

The author does, however, write very movingly about his father's journey to escape Vietnam with his family at the close of war in the 1970s. I only made it halfway through the book, but the father's struggles are enthralling to read. I only wish is comprised a larger chunk of the book. Because the book had those fascinating glimpses into another world, I bumped my rating up to 2 stars.

though i appreciate pham's prose and his frankness in airing out his family's dirty laundry, i think i would've liked this more if it were fiction. but b/c it's real life, and there's only so much self-reflection, vulnerability, and even embellishment a writer can and is willing to share, the narrative is limited to what "actually" happened and what figurative (or philosophical/moral/existential) meanings we can retroactively derive from and attribute to what are mostly random occurrences in the grand chaos of life. and i'm not sure i agree with or like the conclusions pham came to throughout and at the end of his two-wheeled journey: a concoction of two parts self-loathing, two parts "not asian enough but not american enough either" identity issues, one part passive support of western hegemony, a hefty spoonful of entitlement, and a dash of misogyny that left a lingering, sour taste in my mouth.

also, i think we, as immigrants and their descendants, need to get past this delusion of "finding one's cultural identity" by returning/visiting the motherland. culture, identity, and self are not stagnant things with a singular source; they are ever-changing and adaptive, a tangled web of many threads. pham wanted a nice little bow to tie off his complex, multi-faceted struggles and tried too hard to make one. sometimes there isn't a revelation at the end. in real life that's okay.

3,5 *

Vietnam seems to be calling me recently. The graphic novel of "Artemis Fowl" startles me with its opening depiction of the central market in Saigon. A student researches Nixon's presidency and the fall of Saigon. I read "Tree of Smoke," and go to the internet to pull up maps, pictures and stories of Saigon, its surroundings, and the larger Mekong delta region, to look at the places I saw so many years ago (1969-1970). I am drawn into this work, on a summer reading list for another student. Pham seamlessly interweaves who he is today (bravely exposing his flaws), his homeland as he tours it, mostly by bike, and his family's troubled history and extraordinary escape as boat people, with insight and humor. While recommending the book to another Vietnamese expatriate, the father of one my students, he tells me about his own amazing journey to America, just as harrowing and dramatic as that of Pham's. And he lends me a DVD of the excellent and moving movie about the boat people, "Journey from the Fall." Read the book; see the movie.

Words cannot describe how much I hated this book. It is a shame, because Andrew Pham is a talented writer who has an eloquent way with words. However, is tendency to concentrate on the sordid, seedy side of life, seeing only the bad and little of the good, made for a dark and depressing read that was difficult to complete. I recognize that he had some difficult and painful experiences in life, but who doesn't. His knack for focusing on the dismal side of human existence was most disappointing in my opinion.

I loved this book! Found it in a hotel in Hanoi, it was the perfect book to read as I returned home and reflected on our trip. Pham captures the rawness, beauty, chaos, and striving that characterized my brief visit better than I ever could. His own story is remarkable: escaped Vietnam with his family after the war, boat nearly sank, refugee in America, growing up in a rough neighborhood, family drama and trauma, and of course his journeys peddling through mexico, the Pacific coast of the us, and finally, Vietnam. His writing was beautiful and I felt, deeply, his story of such a necessary journey.

Some descriptions I like:

"I try to explain to her about life in America. And that I don't know her. I try not to let my disappointment show. I come searching for truths, hoping for redeeming grace, a touch of gentility. But, no. The abrasiveness of Saigon has stripped away my protective layers. I am raw and bare and I ask myself, Who are these strangers? These Vietnamese, these wanting-wanting-wanting-wanting people. The bitter bile of finding a world I don't remember colors my disconsolate reconciliation between my Saigon of Old and their muddy-grubby Saigon of Now. Saigon gnaws at me . . . its noise . . . its uncompromising want . . . its constant . . . Mememememememememememememe . . ."

. . .

"Could I tell Calvin I was initiated into the American heaven during my first week Stateside by eight black kids who pulverized me in the restroom, calling me Viet Cong? . . . Although we often pretend to be modest and humble as we preen our successful immigrant stories, we rarely admit even to ourselves the circumstances and the cost of our being here. We elude it all like a petty theft committed ages ago. When convenient, we take it as restitution for what happened to Vietnam."

In the end, Pham realizes just how "home" America really is-- imperfections and all. I've been happy to feel similarly when returning from my travels, as much as I love being away.

"But now, I miss the white, the black, the red, the brown faces of America. I miss their varied shapes, their tumultuous diversity, their idealistic search for racial equality, their bumbling but wonderful pioneering spirit. I miss English words in my ears, miss the way the language rolled off my tongue so naturally. I miss its poetry. Somewhere along the way, my search for roots became my search for home-- a place I know best even though there are those who would have me believe otherwise."

This was another book I read to prepare for my trip to Vietnam. I don't think my experience will be anything like Pham's since he is a Viet-kieu (a Vietnamese who lives in the United States) and I am a white American. Also I don't plan to ride a bike from Hanoi south.

However, this book did make me think about the tourist experience. Of course, I bring my own biases to my trip. So I need to stay aware of those biases and try not to let them influence my views of the Vietnamese people too much. I want to be open to the culture and peoples of Vietnam.

Pham, even though he was born in South Vietnam, brought his own life experiences with him. His description of some of the food and his reactions to the poverty and dirt sound American to me. I hope that my stomach does not have the same reaction to the food as Pham's did. I don't want to gain weight, but I don't want to lose a lot because of stomach distress.

All in all, this was a good read: well written, interesting and insightful. I am glad that I encountered Pham, his family and learned a bit about Vietnam in the process.

A voyager of mind, history, and heart. Andrew Pham is a very good writer. His ability to describe a situation, a scene, and emotion, is exquisite. Everywhere he went on this journey I could see and smell the place. This is not a travelogue, this is a journey that Andrew must take to revisit the Vietnam that lingers in his childhood mind. He arrives in Vietnam and often isn't recognized as a Viet-kieu (a person who is Vietnamese but left Vietnam during the war). He rides his bicycle having encounters that range from funny, to heart-warming, to scary. He also travels the landscape of his family's past and little by little, not in chronological order, we are given the difficult history of his family, their escape from Vietnam, their life in the United States, and all their trials and successes. Their life was not easy. Andrew is a person who thinks a lot about what he sees, seeks, feels. It is a great experience to go on this bicycle ride with him.

(Re-reviewed after a recent re-read, Jan 2021):

This will probably end up being the longest review I’ll ever write on GR, and without a doubt the most difficult. It still will only scratch the surface of my thoughts about the book, and despite its length, you’re getting the ruthlessly edited version. t

Andrew Pham, writing in his second language, is an excellent memoirist. He turns his pitiless lens on himself, his family, his city and his past, and does a wonderful job describing the effects that war, flight and resettlement have on a people. What holds these people together throughout their travails is family; family also rips them apart in ways that nothing else could.

I have grown up in a more-or-less peaceful society in which a majority of people have some influence over the trajectory of their lives. This is an unimaginable luxury in some parts of the world, the war-torn Vietnam of the 20th century being a good example . Laid-back California is where a lot of these survivors have ended up, finding work and raising families. Vietnamese-Americans under the age of forty were generally born here, and have lives that are completely disconnected from those of their parents. The author is about my age, and most of the Vietnamese I’ve come to know are like him – people who fled Vietnam in childhood or as teenagers. It marks you.

* * *

Don’t be misled: This is a book filled with beauty. This is Pham, as a boy, eating a star-fruit: The fruit tasted sun-baked, for in full ripeness it was golden, the color of cloud-underbellies tickled by a slanting sun. It had a flowery texture halfway between a melon and an apple, though it was less substantial than either. Its juice was sharp, indecisive between sour and sweet, resulting in a dizzied tanginess that made me think of being out in the sun too long.(p. 57)

Later, he mentions high school girls in their impeccable white ao dai uniforms, “as pretty and perfect as unlit candles” (p. 75, photos mine)



Part of my problem reviewing this book has been my astonishing good luck in ending up in the California city that is home to the greatest number of Vietnamese in the United States. I have been deeply entangled with this community, and it cannot help but deepen the impact this book has on me. So I will hide my own personal stories behind spoilers marked ‘Personal’:

PersonalBefore I met my wife, I spent five years deeply attached to a woman who is a leader in the local Vietnamese community. Through her, Vietnam morphed from abstraction to a place I can still see, smell, touch and taste; the conflicts that torment Vietnamese-Americans became, to a much lesser degree, my conflicts. I will call her Sophie in this review.
As harrowing as Pham’s story is, Sophie’s was much worse. From little acorns do mighty oak trees grow, and the transformation of Sophie from a pariah child to her current position is far too dramatic to be fictional.
* * *
And now some examples of Pham's subject matter and writing style:

Two stories are told in sequence, and are deeply moving (pp. 247-267). The first is a family gathering following the death of Pham’s grandfather; forty-three people crammed into a small Silicon Valley house along with a mountain of food. Proceedings are presided over by two sparrow-sized grandmothers; eight members of the next generation, including the author’s parents, and finally the author and his myriads cousins, niece and nephews. The elders take their places in the dining room while everybody else loads their plates with wonderful food and wanders outside or in front of the television.

Among the elders, voices are raised and it soon devolves into a full meltdown, with one uncle ending up in the driveway, hurling rocks at the house and breaking windows. The argument is about money, respect of younger siblings towards older ones, and how men should “control their wives”. (Note: I personally have not seen much evidence that Vietnamese-American women are predisposed towards external control.)

In the next scene, we’re back in Vietnam, as Pham pedals between Nha Trang and Hanoi. Fevered, hungry, dehydrated and exhausted, he eventually is overtaken by an older man pedaling in the same direction. This man, we learn, has lost his right leg below the knee; he is riding one-legged and carrying a crutch. They fall into conversation and eventually the man invites Pham back to his home for dinner and his “beautiful villa” for a place to spend the night.

Tu’s home is a hut. In the burlap-textured dusk, it rises above the rambling vegetable garden like a big bale of hay. It sits near a lake, fifteen minutes from the road. He leads me into his plot of heaven, going down well-tended rows of vegetables, poking his crutch at this and that the way people open windows and turn on lights. He palms the tomatoes ripening on the vines, prods the earth with his crutch, clicks his tongue, squashes a snail, and fingers the fat string beans dripping off the vines.

The older man prepares a meal of claypot fish:

The older the dish, the deeper the flavors, the more evenly the fish fat blends with the sauce of the carmelized palm sugar, cracked pepper, and chili. In Tu’s pot, I see he has splurged and added diced pork fat, whole red chilis, and scallions.
“Uncle, where is your family?”
“All gone, Nephew. Lot them in the War, wife and son.”
He spreads palm leaves on an end table, scoops out the rice into bowls for both of us. We wolf down our plebeian meal of catfish, rice, pickled firecracker eggplant with shrimp paste, and steamed string beans from his garden, polishing off every morsel. It is without a doubt one of the best meals I’ve had in Vietnam.

The next morning, before Pham takes his leave, Tu talks about the war, the war which cost him his wife, his son, his leg:

”No, I do not hate the American soldiers. Who are they? They were boys, as I was. They were themselves, but also part of a greater creature – the government. As was I. I can no more blame them than a fish I eat can be blamed for what I do.
“You see, their pond is America. Here, in these hills, in this jungle, they are food.
“Me, I am in my land. I am in my water. These hills where I’ve killed Vietnamese and Americans. I see these hills every day. I can make my peace with them. For Americans, it was an alien place then as it I an alien place to them now. The land took their spirit. I eat what grows out of this land and someday I will return all that I have taken from it. Here is my home, my birthland and my grave.
“Tell your friend in America. There is nothing to forgive. There is no hate in this land. No hate in my heart. I am a poor man, my home is a hut with a dirt floor, but he is welcome here. Come and I shall drink tea with him, welcome him like a brother.”

.

It causes me pain to type these words. These are the people we bombed, to quote the war criminal Henry Kissinger, because we wanted “to kill the chicken to scare the monkey.”

Personal At the end of the the war, South Vietnamese nationalists were overrun by Communist North Vietnam. Untold numbers of South Vietnamese were put to death for their roles in the war. Sophie, a small girl at this time, was the result of a union between her mother and a white American soldier – a soldier who did not live long enough to see his daughter born. But her collaboration with the enemy was written into her genes and plainly visible on her face.
(As an aside, her face was one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. For her, it was both a blessing and a curse, a tool she knew full well how to use as well as an impediment to being taken seriously.)



After the Fall of Saigon, she and her mother spent two years living in the woods, but she’d still sneak into school every day. Eventually, a Buddhist temple took her in and she was able to live in a small room in the back while she finished her schooling. I visited this room once, at the end of a narrow, mildewed hallway with a stream of black, smelly water running down one side. The room was about five meters by two, with a hammock strung along one wall, a wooden wardrobe, a broken-off car’s rearview mirror mounted on the wall, and green and white tiled floor.



I used to think of this room, in which she spent the majority of her childhood, when I was sitting in her spacious, cool California house, with those photos of her with the Clintons and Oprah above the fireplace. Sophie did not have much use for the word "can't".

I am really trying not to copy this entire book in blockquote form. But there are so many descriptions here that are crying out to be read:

Mom comes from the old world, where mothers are lifelong housewives who expect to be near their children all their lives. Senior homes, retirement communities don’t exist in their vocabulary….
….She tries so hard I ache for her, this simple woman who takes pleasure nickeling the grocers for bargains, deals for the family. This woman who lets in every Mormon that comes by the house with pamphlets. This woman who makes egg rolls for cosmetic girls at the department store who give her free makeovers. This woman who eats cold leftovers standing in the kitchen alone because lunch in her household is too lonely. This woman whom we’ve shortchanged.

Personal: Sophie and I both eventually ended up marrying. She married a Vietnamese man from a family of wealth and learning back in Vietnam; his father was a renowned professor, a gentle and well-read man. Because this father had worked as a translator with the Americans, he was given the chance to seek asylum in the U.S. when the Communists took over. This raised a rather dicey problem: This professor, like many successful men of that era, had two wives. He married young, for love, and remained deeply in love with his first wife throughout his life. They were unable to have children together. He took a second wife, and she bore six children. Though obviously healthy of body, and apparently a wonderful mother, she and the Professor maintained a distant, polite relationship.
Now he could seek a new life in the United States with his children, but the U.S. would not, of course, allow him to bring two wives along. The wife left behind, as the spouse of a collaborator, faced a grim fate at the hands of the Communists. Next time you’re faced with a tough decision, think for a moment of this man (and try not to look too unkindly upon the bigamy, which was common at the time.) Bring the woman he’d loved his entire adult life, or the beloved mother of his children?

The book is written in the form of two linear narratives: One describing the author’s bicycle ride from San Francisco to Seattle, then a passage through Japan that could have been excised, and finally through the locations of his childhood in Vietnam. Interleaved with this story is a second, roughly linear story describing his happy childhood, the disruption of the Communist takeover, escape from the country and eventual resettlement in San Jose. Their integration into American life was – surprise, surprise – not without difficulty. Although they are two stories, they describe one life, and describe it in a manner that is deep and unforgettable.

Phuong aka 'Sophie' succumbed to cancer, age 52, on Aug. 19, 2022. May she find in the afterlife the peace that eluded her here.