Very moving. Bracingly honest. Probably worst book you could read before starting a two week vacation in Vietnam.

This book was left to me by a friend who was passing through Singapore in early 2008. I started the book about that time but only just completed it.

Not that it was unreadable or anything like that. In fact, I enjoyed it. (Another friend who visited me finished the book in a day.) It's just that the story never developed a tempo/pace that propelled me forward.

It's a book about identity and history, about self, about family and all the things we don't say but wish was understood. The book is also a travelogue of a Viet-American's journey and exploration of Vietnam, of memory versus reality.

In some ways, it's the typical Asian American, who-am-I, what-am-I-looking-for, where-do-i-belong book. (Is it me or do Asian Americans go on this search for "self" a lot?)

It's an easy read, at times fun and, at others, bland. I found the experiences about a Viet-Kieu traveling in Vietnam and the animosity he encounters more interesting than the soul-searching. Not to discount these personal, family moments. They just didn't interest me as much.

Experienced and written about 10 years ago, I wonder how and if attitudes towards Viet-Kieu's have changed since?

overall a very well written book that takes you through Andrew Pham's journey for self identity, rediscovering his past all the while trying to come to grips with his life and family in the US. The chapters alternate between his past and present, which keeps you hooked. His descriptions and adventures through Vietnam are very vivid and has even helped me understand the culture and etiquette of Vietnam more thoroughly, I highly recommend it.

Deep and thought provoking

The subtitle pretty well sums this up. Andrew rode his bike up the western U.S. coast, then catches a plane to Japan where he rides for several weeks before going on to Vietnam. Some of the chapters are His memories from childhood before immigrating to the States. The remaining chapters are the experiences of the ride. From page 337: "Somewhere along the way, my search for roots has become my search for home-a place I know best even though there are those who would have me believe otherwise."
OK. At points I struggled with whether it was memory or present. Rough language in places that I don't know was necessary. I'd never read anything to this point focusing on Vietnam so it was a new country for me. Not something I'd want to read again.

This book is far more than just a tale about traveling through Vietnam by bike. It is a beautifully crafted story that traverses time, countries, cultures, and historical events. It can be hard to believe that it’s not a work of fiction. At times funny, heartbreaking, suspenseful - but always moving.

(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.

Non-fiction. Memoir, travelogue, and history. Andrew X. Pham leaves his life in the US to ride his bicycle through Vietnam, the country where he was born, the country that put his father into a labor camp, the country that forced his family to flee to America when he was ten years old.

This took me a while to read because it was a difficult book. Not difficult to read -- it was almost too easy to read, Pham's humor and lyricism made his ride through Vietnam so accessible I could feel its beauty as easily as I could feel its poverty and corruption, but that was the problem. I could only read a few chapters at a time before I got too depressed to go on. It's an excellent book, well written, descriptive, and painful. As a warning, it does deal with suicide, gender issues, torture, and forced internment. Also gastrointestinal distress. It was hard to read, but worth the discomfort.

Four stars for its beautiful language and storytelling.

I'm so glad I stumbled upon this book. My 23 year old son was taking off for Southeast Asia with the intention to go to Viet Nam with two friends. I picked this up for him and he didn't have room for another book so I read it. Lots of really emotional stuff about family and being between two cultural identities. Great travel log with history and memoir mixed in. Really well written, I thought. Good read.

3.5 stars. Catfish and Mandala is a travelogue of Andrew Pham’s cycling trip through Vietnam and serves as a launching pad for excavating his family’s past. Because he’s Vietnamese American, he gets treated with resentment from the Vietnamese who stayed but because he is also a partial native, he gains access to a part of Vietnam that most Western tourists wouldn’t get to witness. Like many Asian American stories, Pham is searching for home, a place where he doesn’t feel like an outsider.

He speaks about his Asian American experience with passion, simplicity, specificity, and insight and he excels at description and metaphor, evoking an emotional response from me even when he doesn’t offer too much of his own emotions. His description of his family and their struggles as new immigrants are particularly poignant. And I think he was really honest in how he expresses the guilt he feels about being the oldest son, a fraud, and a failure in the eyes of his parents. I feel like Pham is also trying to come to terms with the death of his sister as well. I was particularly interested his relationship with Chi and I like how admits he is not the authentic eldest son because his older sister should have been it.

I started off really excited by this book because I identified with Pham’s descriptions of his immigrant family and his struggle with trying to find himself. But after about 100 pages my excitement started to wane because he kept on cutting from past to present to dreamlike chapters—he builds up the suspense in a past event and switches to the present and by the time he gets back to the past the momentum is lost. The book was an honest portrayal of his experience but some parts lacked emotional depth. I wanted less description of his bowel movements and almost getting his ass kicked by drunken Vietnamese men and more about his emotional journey.

A perfect description of eating star fruits:
“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 that either. Its juice was sharp, indecisive between sour and sweet, resulting in a dizzied tanginess….

I'm a little biased as an expat living in Ho Chi Minh City and a bicycling enthusiast, but I really enjoyed this. It was interesting learning about the life of a Viet Kieu, an exile after the fall of Saigon returning to his home country and his various perceptions and interactions throughout various big cities and small villages. I learned a lot about my new place of residence although much of the information seems less relevant now than it would have been ten years ago.

I started reading this on a trip to the beach in Vung Tau, having bought a photocopied version from a street vendor as I sat in the backpacker area of HCMC drinking Saigon Green. I finished reading it a few weeks later at a resort in the mountains of Dalat, a place whose climate and landscape are unrecognizable as Southeast Asia. It's possible that my experiences and environment have clouded my estimation of the book.

Despite all of this, it's a very well written work: part memoir, part travelogue, told in disjointed order about Pham's family's escape from Saigon, his father's time as a prisoner, Pham's upbringing in the US, his dysfunctional family life, his sister's gender reassignment and subsequent suicide and, most interesting, an ambiguous revelation told in pieces of how his mother and father made their original fortune.

Highly recommended.

Loved it!

It occurs to me that this is my first travelogue! Anyways, I'm not sure why I wasn't drawn to this genre before, but if this is what travel writing is about - I'm completely hooked.

My rating is likely influenced by the fact that I've spent a lot of time in Vietnam this year, and finished the book in one of it's cafes. But beyond that, I felt the writing was fantastic and the identity crisis at its heart was truly engaging. I have a much richer understanding of Vietnam, and the struggle for Vietnamese Americans following the war.

As an aside - I think the entire section on Japan could have easily been skipped.