Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam by Andrew X. Pham

From Barnes & Noble

I took a break from reading Andrew X. Pham's brilliant, haunting memoir of his trip through Vietnam, Catfish and Mandala, to watch TV. My remote control landed me on MTV, right in the middle of a Road Rules: Semester at Sea marathon. Confession: I am a Road Rules junkie. This travelogue-cum-voyeuristic adventure soap opera series has the power to reel me in like nothing else on television does.

And as I sat on my couch, savoring this mind candy, I got an extra treat. I had happened upon the episodes where the cast is in Vietnam. These episodes of Road Rules were full of images to complement my day's reading.

Pham's descriptions of riding his bicycle through the clogged streets of Saigon were made all the more vivid when I watched the cast trying to race around the congested, polluted city. The cast ate many of the Vietnamese delicacies that turned Pham's stomach. The cast was confronted by beggars, as was Pham, who was plagued with guilt about them throughout his trip.

As the episode drew to a close, I realized that surprisingly, despite a massive difference in perspective, the Road Rulers and Pham had similar observations of Vietnam that stemmed from the bizarre experience of being an American in a country America was at war with. I also realized that not only is Pham's book wonderful in its own right, but it's also an important addition to the growing body of literature about the relationship between America and Vietnam.

However, Catfish and Mandala's premise -- Pham bikes from California to Vietnam, the land of his birth, in an attempt to make sense of his trans-national identity -- renders it a challenging and extremely complex read. There is more here than just a story of a native son returning home.

A recurring theme throughout Catfish and Mandala is the fact that Pham doesn't feel at home anywhere in the world. His ethnicity and familial obligations prevent him from truly assimilating in America. In Vietnam, his American passport earns him the moniker Viet-kieu, a term that means "foreign Vietnamese" and that is highly stigmatized. Often in Vietnam, his claims to his ethnicity are challenged violently.

But epithets, fists and dysentery don't stop Pham from traveling to through Vietnam on his bicycle; the town of his birth is his final destination. Although the places of his youth bear no resemblance to the country he remembers, Pham draws a grounding sense of knowing, and ultimately, closure from them. It's as if seeing how different Vietnam is from his memories gives him the courage to make peace with the role his roots play in his American life.

Pham is a "boat person" who came to the US in 1977. His father, a former Nationalist Army propagandist, is a survivor of a communist reeducation death camp. His mother meticulously plotted their family's harrowing escape from Vietnam under constant threat of incarceration.

Pham spends most of his life trying to reconcile his desire to live his own life with the remnants of the life his parents' left behind. "Our father sacrificed for us as his father had sacrificed for him, each one of us racking up a debt so large we'd never dare to contemplate pursuing our own dreams. No, there are no independent visionaries in a line of sacrifices," Pham writes.

His decision to pick up and bicycle to Vietnam, something he views as wholly "unethnic," stems from these frustrations. Pham's journey is also prompted by the suicide of his transsexual sister Chi.

Intertwined with stories of his time in Vietnam, Chi's troubling relationship with Pham's father is recounted throughout Catfish and Mandala, as are the tales of his parents' personal histories, and Pham's own life story. This makes Catfish and Mandala less a travelogue and more an autobiography. But Pham's narration, and the stories themselves, make Catfish and Mandala breathtaking. In Vietnam, Pham bridges the gaps between past and present, and leaves with a true sense of himself.

And along the way, he gives the reader a painfully intimate look at whom he is, and what Vietnam has become, that a reader will be richer for taking the time to understand. Pham's fascinating book is a very heavy, but ultimately an incredibly worthwhile read.

—Emily Burg

Emily Burg is a freelancer who reads travel books during the commercials.

From the Publisher

Winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
Winner of the Whiting Writers' Award
A Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Book of the Year

Catfish and Mandala is the story of an American odyssey—a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam—made by a young Vietnamese-American man in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland.

Andrew X. Pham was born in Vietnam and raised in California. His father had been a POW of the Vietcong; his family came to America as "boat people." Following the suicide of his sister, Pham quit his job, sold all of his possessions, and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert, around a thousand-mile loop from Narita to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon, where he finds "nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness." In Vietnam, he's taken for Japanese or Korean by his countrymen, except, of course, by his relatives, who doubt that as a Vietnamese he has the stamina to complete his journey ("Only Westerners can do it"); and in the United States he's considered anything but American. A vibrant, picaresque memoir written with narrative flair and an eye-opening sense of adventure, Catfish and Mandala is an unforgettable search for cultural identity.

Publishers Weekly

In narrating his search for his roots, Vietnamese-American and first-time author Pham alternates between two story lines. The first, which begins in war-torn Vietnam, chronicles the author's hair-raising escape to the U.S. as an adolescent in 1977 and his family's subsequent and somewhat troubled life in California. The second recounts his return to Vietnam almost two decades later as an Americanized but culturally confused young man. Uncertain if his trip is a "pilgrimage or a farce," Pham pedals his bike the length of his native country, all the while confronting the guilt he feels as a successful Viet-kieu (Vietnamese expatriate) and as a survivor of his older sister Chai, whose isolation in America and eventual suicide he did little to prevent. Flipping between the two story lines, Pham elucidates his main dilemma: he's an outsider in both America and Vietnam--in the former for being Vietnamese, and the latter for being Viet-kieu. Aside from a weakness for hyphenated compounds like "people-thick" and "passion-rich," Pham's prose is fluid and fast, navigating deftly through time and space. Wonderful passages describe the magical qualities of catfish stew, the gruesome preparation of "gaping fish" (a fish is seared briefly in oil with its head sticking out, but is supposedly still alive when served), the furious flow of traffic in Ho Chi Minh City and his exasperating confrontations with gangsters, drunken soldiers and corrupt bureaucrats. In writing a sensitive, revealing book about cultural identity, Pham also succeeds in creating an exciting adventure story. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

As a child, Pham fled Vietnam with his family and settled in California. Here he recounts his return--by bicycle, as he wheels up the West Coast, boards a plane, and finds himself at the airport in Saigon, cursing out the "nitwits in flip-flops" who wrecked his bike. Clearly, this is no sentimental journey; Pham's is a soul divided. He's a contentious guide, but the journey is heartrending and invaluable. (LJ 10/1/99) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Pham was born in Vietnam in 1967, moved with his family to California, and now lives in Portland, Oregon. Here he chronicles his return to Vietnam, his travels on a rickety bicycle, and his search for cultural identity. While his father's time in a communist reeducation camp is discussed, the heart of the narrative is Pham's depiction of his five- month journey in Vietnam. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

The New Yorker

A modern Plutarch might pair Pham's story with that of Chris McCandless, the uncompromising young man whose spiritual quest led him to a forlorn death in Alaska, Pham, instead of seeking out remote places where he could explore fantasies of self-sufficiency, instictively understood that self-knowledge emerges from engagement with others. In his passionate telling, his travelogue acquires the universality of a bildungsroman.

Kirkus Reviews

A brilliantly written memoir in which a young Vietnamese-American uses a bicycle journey in his homeland as a vehicle to tell his eventful life story. The veteran-penned "going back" book has become a subgenre of the American Vietnam War canon. So, too, has the multigenerational Vietnamese-refugee family saga. Now comes a stunning first: a family tale by a Vietnamese-American that centers on an eye-opening trip to his native land. Pham (born Pham Xuan An) fled Vietnam with his family in 1977 at age ten. Raised in California, he worked hard, went to UCLA, and landed a good engineering job. A few years ago, rebelling against family pressures to succeed and a patronizing, if not racist, work environment, Pham quit his job. Much to his parents' displeasure, he set off on bicycle excursions through Mexico, Japan, and, finally, Vietnam. "I have to do something unethnic," he says. "I have to go. Make my pilgrimage." In his first book, Pham details his solo cycling journeys, mixing in stories of his and his family's life before and after leaving Vietnam. The most riveting sections are Pham's exceptional evocations of his father's time in a postwar communist reeducation (read: concentration) camp and the family's near miraculous escape by sea from their homeland. The heart of the narrative is Pham's depiction of his five-month adventure in Vietnam, often not a pretty picture. Because of his unique status as a budget-minded Viet Kieu (overseas Vietnamese), he runs into significant harassment from the police and many unfriendly civilians. For every moment of self-discovery and enchantment there seem to be ten of disappointment and dispiritedness—plus nearly constant physical pain fromhis journey and a bout of dysentery. But Pham perseveres. He returns to his home, America, with a smile on his face. An insightful, creatively written report on Vietnam today and on the fate of a Vietnamese family in America.

What People Are Saying

Bridget Samburg
Catfish and Mandala tells the stoyr of one man's ambitous bicycle trip through Mexico, Japan, and picturesque Vietnam in a quest to understand his identity as a Vietnamese-American. In search of a kinship with his birth country, Andrew Pham wards off beggars and robbers while befriending those willing to share their homeland with him. Meanwhile, Pham is haunted by the memories of the life he left behind as a child in Vietnam.
—Bridget Samburg; Brill's Content

Product Details

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Chapter One

Exile - Pilgrim

The first thing I notice about Tyle is that he can squat on his haunches Third World-style, indefinitely. He is a giant, an anachronistic Thor in rasta drag, barechested, barefoot, desert-baked golden. A month of wandering the Mexican wasteland has tumbled me into his lone camp warded by cacti. Rising from the makeshift pavilion staked against the camper top of his pickup, he moves to meet me with an idle power I envy. I see the wind has carved leathery lines into his legend-hewn face of fjords and right angles.

   In a dry, earthen voice, he asks me, "Looking for the hot spring?"

   "Yeah, Agua Caliente. Am I even close?"

   "Sure. This is the place. Up the way a couple hundred yards."

   "Amazing! I found it!"

    He smiles, suddenly very charismatic, and shakes his head of long matty blond hair. "How you got here on that bike is amazing."

    I had been pedaling and pushing through the forlorn land, roaming the foreign coast on disused roads and dirt tracks. When I was hungry or thirsty, I stopped at ranches and farms and begged the owners for water from their wells and tried to buy tortillas, eggs, goat cheese, and fruit. Every place gave me nourishment; men and women plucked grapefruits and tangerines from their family gardens, bagged food from their pantries, and accepted not one peso in return. Why, I asked them. Señor, they explained in the patient tone reserved for those convalescing, you are riding a bicycle, so you are poor. You are in the desert goingnowhere, so you are crazy. Taking money from a poor and crazy man brings bad luck. All the extras, they confided, were because I wasn't a gringo. A crew of Mexican ranchers said they liked me because I was a bueno hermano—good brother—a Vietnamito, and my little Vietnam had golpea big America back in '75. But I'm American, Vietnamese American, I shouted at them. They grinned—Sí, sí, Señor—and grilled me a slab of beef.

    Tyle says, "So, where are you from?"

    "Bay Area, California."

    "No. Where are you from? Originally."

    I have always hated this question and resent him for asking. I hide my distaste because it is un-American. Perhaps I will lie. I often do when someone corners me. Sometimes, my prepared invention slips out before I realize it: I'm Japanese-Korean-Chinese-mixed-race Asian. No, sir, can't speak any language but good old American English.

    This time, I turn the question: "Where do you think?"

    "Korea."

    Something about him makes me dance around the truth. I chuckle, painfully aware that "I'm an American" carries little weight with him. It no doubt resonates truer in his voice.

    The blond giant holds me with his green eyes, making me feel small, crooked. So I reply, "We nips all look alike."

    But it isn't enough. He looks the question at me again, and, by a darkness on his face, I know I owe him.

    "I'm from Vietnam."

    A flinch in the corner of his eye. He grunts, a sound deep from his diaphragm. Verdict passed. He turns his back to me and heaves into the cactus forest.

    I stand, a trespasser in his camp, hearing echoes—Chink, gook, Jap, Charlie, GO HOME, SLANT-EYES!—words that, I believe, must have razored my sister Chi down dark alleys, hounded her in the cold after she had fled home, a sixteen-year-old runaway, an illegal alien without her green card. What vicious clicking sounds did they make in her Vietnamese ears, wholly new to English? And, within their boundaries, which America did she find?

    A man once revealed something which disturbed me too much to be discounted. He said, "Your sister died because she became too American."

Later in the night, from the thick of the brush, Tyle ghosts into the orange light of my campfire. He nods at me and folds himself cross-legged before the popping flames, uncorks a fresh tequila bottle, takes a swig, and hands it to me. We sit on the ground far apart enough that with outstretched arms we still have to lean to relay the bottle.

    I grip the warm sand between my toes and loll the tart tequila on my tongue. A bottom-heavy moon teeters on the treetops. Stars balm the night. We seem content in our unspoken truce.

    When the bottle is half empty, Tyle begins to talk. At first, he talks about the soothing solitude of the Mexican desert. Life is simple here, food cheap, liquor plentiful. He earns most of his money from selling his handicrafts—bracelets, woven bands, beads, leather trinkets—to tourists. When times are tough, there are always a few Mexicans who will hire him for English lessons or translations. And the border isn't too far if he needs to work up a large chunk of cash. Between the mundane details, his real life comes out obliquely. Tyle has a wife and two boys. He has been away from them nine years. I am the first Vietnamese he has seen since he fled to Mexico seven years ago.

    When four fingers of tequila slosh at the bottom of the bottle, he asks me, "Have you been back to Vietnam?"

    "No. But someday I'll go back ... to visit."

    Many Vietnamese Americans "have been back." For some of us, by returning as tourists we prove to ourselves that we are no longer Vietnamese but Vietnamese Americans. We return, with our hearts in our throats, to taunt the Communist regime, to show through our material success that we, the once pitiful exiles, are now the victors. No longer the poverty-stricken refugees clinging to fishing boats, spilling out of cargo planes onto American soil, a mess of open-mouthed terror, wide-eyed awe, hungry and howling for salvation. Time has veiled the days when America fished us out of the ocean like drowning cockroaches and fed us and clothed us—we, the onus of their tragedy. We return and, in our personal silence, we gloat at our conquerors, who now seem like obnoxious monkeys cheating over baubles, our baggage, which mean little to us. Mostly, we return because we are lost.

    Tyle says, "I was in Nam."

    I have guessed as much. Not knowing what to say, I nod. Vets—acquaintances and strangers—have said variations of this to me since I was a kid and didn't know what or where Nam was. The contraction was lost on a boy struggling to learn English. But the note, the way these men said it, told me it was important, someplace I ought to know. With the years, this statement took on new meanings, each flavored by the tone of the speaker. There was bitterness, and there was bewilderment. There was loss and rage and every shade of emotion in between. I heard declarations, accusations, boasts, demands, obligations, challenges, and curses in the four words: I was in Nam. No matter how they said it, an ache welled up in me until an urge to make some sort of reparation slicked my palms with sweat. Some gesture of conciliation. Remorse. A word of apology.

    He must have seen me wince for he says it again, more gently.

    At that, I do something I've never done before. I bow to him like a respected colleague. It is a bow of acknowledgment, a bow of humility, the only way I can tell him I know of his loss, his sufferings.

    Looking into the fire, he says softly, "Forgive me. Forgive me for what I have done to your people."

    The night buckles around me. "What, Tyle?"

    "I'm sorry, man. I'm really sorry," he whispers. The blond giant begins to cry, a tired, sobless weeping, tears falling away untouched.

    My mouth forms the words, but I cannot utter them. No. No, Tyle. How can I forgive you? What have you done to my people? But who are my people? I don't know them. Are you my people? How can you be my people? All my life, I've looked at you sideways, wondering if you were wondering if my brothers had killed your brothers in the war that made no sense except for the one act of sowing me here—my gain—in your bed, this strange rich-poor, generous-cruel land. I move through your world, a careful visitor, respectful and mindful, hoping for but not believing in the day when I become native. I am the rootless one, yet still the beneficiary of all of your and all of their sufferings. Then why, of us two, am I the savior, and you the sinner?

    "Please forgive me."

    I deny him with my silence.

    His Viking face mashes up, twisting like a child's just before the first bawl. It doesn't come. Instead words cascade out, disjointed sentences, sputtering incoherence that at the initial rush sound like a drunk's ravings. Nameless faces. Places. Killings. He bleeds it out, airs it into the flames, pours it on me. And all I can do is gasp Oh, God at him over and over, knowing I will carry his secrets all my days.

    He asks my pardon yet again, his open hand outstretched to me. This time the quiet turns and I give him the absolution that is not mine to give. And, in my fraudulence, I know I have embarked on something greater than myself.

    "When you go to Vietnam," he says, stating it as a fact, "tell them about me. Tell them about my life, the way I'm living. Tell them about the family I've lost. Tell them I'm sorry."

    I give Tyle the most honored gift, the singular girl we Vietnamese give best, the gift into which one can cast all one's sorrow like trash into an abyss, only sometimes the abyss lies inside the giver. I give him silence.