I'm officially in love with Andrew Lam's words. In this memoir, Lam's exquisite way of navigating worlds as the global villager, from San Francisco to Paris to Hanoi and back to childhood Dalat, is parceled into the finest of lines and paragraphs. That he becomes public in English, a third language, French and Vietnamese his first languages, is phenomenal. The hard edges of truths and realizations are blurred only by Lam's lyrical abilities, which allow him and us to peer more deeply into the life of the child and the eventual man, before and since the fall of Saigon.

Lam arrived in the USA as a child refugee of the Vietnam War. This book is a collection of essays in which he reflects on his memories of Vietnam, the war, and coming to the United States. It's well-written, engaging, and, ultimately, very uplifting.

Another wonderful book that fed my fascination with Vietnam, as well as the Vietnamese American experience.

"The greatest phenomenon in this century, I am convinced, has little to do with the world wars but with the dispossessed they sent fleeing; the Cold War and its aftermath has given birth to a race of children born "elsewhere," of transnationals whose memories are layered and whose biographies transgress national boundaries." In richly evocative language, Lam describes his own experience and that of other Vietnamese and Vietnamese-Americans since the war whose location is the sum of what most Americans know of that land. I read the book to increase my understanding of the community in which I work. Though much remains to be learned, Lam's essays give me the feel of his experiences, a sense of place with its sights and scents, sensations and emotions, of its traditions and now rapidly changing culture.

Some of the essays, especially early in the book, are very poignant and provide clarity on the Vietnamese diaspora. I was less interested in many in the middle, but it got good again at the end.

Initially, this book was too slow for but as time progressed I began to really enjoy the writing. Using simplistic language, the author describes what goes through the mind of a child going through a war escaping and growing up in America. His juxtaposed experiences tell a story of person that has truly lived different lives.

I especially enjoyed the portions of the book in which the author describes how different this modern world is compared to the life his parents led in Vietnam. His father, a loyal high ranking official in the Vietnamese army became a shadow of his former self becoming an unemployed drunkard in America. All hope was lost on him but he endured and was able to develop an identity away from war in order to support his family.

However, this is a short read with a lot of history to tell so this was just more or less just a glance of the author's experiences in Vietnam. Still, it does tell a lot in its pages.

I knew almost nothing about the Vietnamese diaspora, and nothing at all about the boat people who, having fled as far as Hong Kong, were imprisoned, suffered cruelly, and then - horrible to consider - were forcibly returned to a communist Vietnam.

I read this to learn more about the experience of Vietnamese immigrants to the USA. Also, I knew that as a third culture kid I would partially relate to this experience, and I did indeed find many passages that rang true.

"Home forever lost is forever bathed in a certain twilight glow."

"Home is portable if one is in commune with one’s soul."

"The immigrant child, wanting the larger world, shunning the old ways, inexorably breaks his parents’ hearts."

"Democracy, on the other hand, can only flourish when opposite ideas are not only encouraged but respected."

this book exceeded my expectations in retelling the stories of vietnamese diaspora. i gave 4 stars instead of 5 stars because the book is a collection of essays, and since each is written with the author's background, repeated several times, i now remember he's left vietnam in a cargo plane to guam on 4/28/1975.

it is also notable that the author writes well, at times reflecting poetry, wit and humor.

Read it for an anthropology class, and I actually liked it. If you want to understand the Vietnamese diaspora and the 1.5 generation, I highly recommend this book.

This is a great book. The story about a young Vietnamese boy that left Saigon , when it fell in 1975. And his assimilation into the United States way of living. His Dad was a high ranking South Vietnamese solider. Life as he knew it changed drastically.

Reading Lam's essays/stories gave me an important and incredible glimpse into another war refugee's experiences and thoughts on life and death. Being adopted from Vietnam as an infant, on paper, I'm part of the diaspora that came forth from the end of the Vietnam/American War. However, due to my age and circumstances, I have no recollection of my few months living in South Vietnam and no blood relations to tell me stories about the old country. The essays presented in Perfume Dreams made me reflect on what it might have, or could have, been like if I had left the country at an older age and with blood relatives.

I think the book is mainly a testament to the author's transformation from a rigid upbringing and deeply embedded cultural expectations into a world traveler and respected journalist. Each essay in the collection attempts to bring about a balance of subjective and objective points of view, and deftly comes to terms with ever-present nostalgia and modern reality.

In the future, I'm sure it'll be a pleasure to read his other two books that have been published since Perfume Dreams.

Worth the read, but I got 100x more from Catfish and Mandala.