Catfish and Mandala: A Vietnamese Odyssey by andrew x. pham

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I enjoyed this book as a I haven't read a good travel story in awhile. It is full of the clever writing and one liners you except in a book like this. And yet it also has a lot of heart and is a personal story of one man's quest to understand his life and identity after growing up in America when his family escaped Vietnam after the war.

I think the key note I took away from this is the importance of the human values of humor and tolerance. When understanding, sympathy, and agreement have yet to come you can find a joke (in all serious) to commiserate on the human condition. You can just agree to coexist and see what comes of the relationship - friendship also resulted for the author. It just made me consider the nature of tolerance and understanding that understanding comes with patience and with a healthy dose of humor (self-effacing, commiseration).

He also spent quite a bit of time in the book ruminating on poverty and fate. Why was I born into this life and another missed it to live in a crushing sort of poverty? I think this question is best asked against the desire to make real commitments to live with easy generosity. Wealth comes and goes and is with me by no doing of my own. I can share. I can do unto others as I would have them do unto to me. I can lose a little to give a little.

And in the end the travel aspects of the book were successful! It made me want to travel back to Vietnam and just travel in general! The journey really is the destination and there is so much to be learned from any kind of "getting away" even if it's not that far. So I look forward to when I can hit the road again for a little trip. Maybe even back to Vietnam! ;)

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Fayezinha

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

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."

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JKrauser

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

"Forgiveness is a hollow gift when there is no mountain to move as compensation for the wrongs. For our truths change with time. There is noting else. No mitigating circumstances and no power to undo the sins. No was. Only is. Between us, there is but a thin line of intention."

An intimate meditation on family, heritage, poverty, trauma, and privilege, Catfish and Mandala is deeply moving. It as much a journey through grief and identity as it is a tour through Vietnam. Pham's prose is beautifully rich and dreamy, his grasp of language a delight, even when the subject matter is anything but.

The issues he addresses are immense and complicated, both deeply personal and international in scale. For this reason I think some of his conclusions can come across as adjacent to Western exceptionalism. However, I think it would be unfair to dismiss him as such. His reflections display a self-awareness about his Americanized perspective. Above all, it is important to consider this is a memoir of personal turmoil, not intended to reckon with the geopolitical history of a nation. His personal feelings of resentment and seclusion, and his ability to forgive, don't equate a universal statement.

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Faded_Star

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I couldn't finish this. I so wanted to like it and the guy does write beautifully. There are some wonderful moments. There is just too much of it. Too many delicately intricately described scenes of street squalor. Too much existential despair and identity questioning. And this is one very depressed guy which makes it all the more difficult. I'd hoped to find an insiders view and its probably there among the navel gazing but... For my own mental health I had to stop. Maybe I'm just not strong enough.

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Oze

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I remember Tien asking me if I thought someday I could take my own life as Chi had done. Could you do it, Andrew, if everyone you loved had forsaken you—no hope left, nothing to live for? Maybe, I told him, I don’t know but I always think I have one last ticket, one last hand to gamble. What would you do then before you die? I’d walk out the door to destinations unknown, spending the sum of my breaths in one extravagant gesture. (Loc. 493-496)

When your older sister-brother hangs himself after having run away from home more than 14 years earlier, what do you do? If you are Andrew Pham, you bike up the west coast of the US, fly to Japan, then bike throughout Japan and Vietnam. Pham describes this journey in Catfish and Mandala: A Two-wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam.

To be fair, Pham's journey was motivated by many confusing things that needed to be put to rest: war and starvation; his family's journey by boat from Vietnam in 1975 and their unlikely rescue; his beloved older sister's running away and later return as a man; Minh's suicide; the generational abuse that threaded throughout and damaged the family; his search for a home in a country that said he didn't belong.

In the US, Pham was "Chink, gook, Jap, Charlie, GO HOME, SLANT-EYES!" (Loc. 107). Any white face could be a face of violence—a quiet fear we live with (Loc. 584-585). In Vietnam, he was accused of being Viet-kieu (foreign Vietnamese), threatened with violence. As one Vietnamese cousin said: “Viet-kieu’s fickleness causes a lot of problems. Refusing to eat the same food as your hosts makes them think that you think you’re too good for them. Their food is filthy, unfit for you” (Loc. 1272-1273).

Shame and guilt circle around Pham: guilt for not being there for Chi-Minh, for not having volunteered to work with runaways or the homeless, shame for having been luckier than any of the "more deserving" Vietnamese he met in his travels: In this Vietnamese muck, I am too American. Too refined, too removed from my que, my birth village. The sight of my roots repulses me. And this shames me deeply. (Loc. 2850-2851)

This could be a peculiarly Vietnamese (or Vietnamese–American) story, but most of us have experienced something outside our realm of understanding – suicide, abuse, violence, bullying, grief –and need to discover some way of putting it at rest. Pham does so by interweaving descriptions of his travels with many descriptions of food, eating, and loose bowels; childhood memories (watching over his father in prison camp; exploring his hometown, Phan Thiet; expecting to drown in their escape from Vietnam); and his long ago and recent past in the US. His stories sometimes feel like a broken necklace, where not all of the beads are found and threaded together. I swear that he didn't complete some stories – but isn't that the nature of memory?

Talking about things may not make all memories lie flat and clean (and this is not a flat and clean review), but it can help make more sense. Pham was able to hear his father's lamentations about not being a better father: “I didn’t know better. It is the Vietnamese way. You beat your children if you love them. You beat them to show them the right way to live. You beat them to let them know they are important to you.” (Loc. 4980-4982)

“What will you do in America?” Son asks, reverting back to English as he usually does when he is serious.

The answer falls on me, a drop of water from a blue sky: “Be a better American.” (Loc. 5262-5264)

Kindle edition: About 80% of my reading is on my kindle, which I love for its light weight and convenience, easy searches through a book, and effortless reading at night. However, when I read classics, the editions often have transcription errors. My version of Ellison's Invisible Man was completely unreadable. Unfortunately, even though Catfish and Mandala was first published in 1999, it had many small errors that marred its story.

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rallou-m

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

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.

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RspBerrie

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

DNF @ pg 216 of 342

I'm not giving to give this book a rating because I just don't know how to be fair about this besides not rating it at all.

Pham's writing is beautiful, and his travels in Vietnam while looking for his roots as a Vietnamese-American immigrant who left Vietnam during the Vietnam war are nothing short of interesting and at times moving. He includes a great many details, and balances emotional observations with the odd funny bit of his trip.

The reason I gave up on reading this book though is due to issues I had with how his trans brother who commits suicide at the very beginning of the memoir is depicted. It does not feel fair to me to rate this book because of this - 1999 certainly did not offer much transgender visibility, and I understand why Pham continuously misgenders and deadnames his brother. However, as a trans man myself, reading Pham's poor understanding of what being transgender means was very difficult, and the ways he references his late transgender brother was just too much. It is obvious that Pham really cared for his brother and felt sorrow at his passing, and like I said, 1999 was not this great period of understanding for transgender people.

I flipped ahead a bit to see what happens with Minh in terms of Pham continuing to talk about him, and while it looks like some things are resolved, it's still too difficult for me to continue to that end.

For my own needs I NEED to stop reading this book. I doubt I will ever return to this book again. If anyone who can understandably get past the period-typical misunderstandings of transness, then this is a great book - for those who understandably cannot for whatever reason get past the period-typical misunderstandings of transness, flee like a bat out of hell.

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CJ_hope

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I read this many years ago, around the time it first came out. From what I remember the language is beautiful. It is heartfelt and touching, yet somehow still remaining distant. I feel this is the point. After all, no matter how close humans get to figuring our own lives and humanity out, we never receive full disclosure, do we?

Sometimes I wonder if I went overseas to the places of my ancestors would I feel more at home? Would I find some lost part of my self that I left there? Would I make more sense to myself?

This type of personal searching and eloquent language (some thought provoking lines and beautiful descriptions) are what I remember from reading it long, long ago.

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Catfish and Mandala: A Vietnamese Odyssey

andrew x. pham

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