Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam | 
 enlarge | Author: Andrew X. Pham
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $5.00
You Save: $10.00 (67%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  114 reviews
Sales Rank: 6046
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1
ISBN: 0312267177
Dewey Decimal Number: 915.970444
EAN: 9780312267179
ASIN: 0312267177
Publication Date: September 2, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Some shelf-wear but inside is near new (old price inside front cover in pencil). Tight, possibly never read.
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Amazon.com
A great memoirist can burnish even an ordinary childhood into something bright--see, for instance, Annie Dillard's An American Childhood. So what about a really good writer with access to a dramatic and little-documented story? This is the case with Catfish and Mandala, Vietnamese American Andrew X. Pham's captivating first book, which delves fearlessly into questions of home, family, and identity. The son of Vietnamese parents who suffered terribly during the Vietnam War and brought their family to America when he was 10, Pham, on the cusp of his 30s, defied his parents' conservative hopes for him and his engineering career by becoming a poorly paid freelance writer. After the suicide of his sister, he set off on an even riskier path to travel some of the world on his bicycle. In the grueling, enlightening year that followed, he pedaled through Mexico, the American West Coast, Japan, and finally his far-off first land, Vietnam. The story, with some of a mandala's repeated symbolic motifs, works on several levels at once. It is an exploration into the meaning of home, a descriptive travelogue, and an intimate look at the Vietnamese immigrant experience. There are beautifully illuminated flashbacks to the experience of fleeing Vietnam and to an earlier, more innocent childhood. While Pham's stern father, a survivor of Vietcong death camps, regrets that Pham has not been a respectful Vietnamese son, he also reveals that he wishes he himself had been more "American" for his kids, that he had "taken [them] camping." Catfish and Mandala is a book of double-edged truths, and it would make a fascinating study even in less able hands. In those of the adventurous, unsentimental Pham, it is an irresistible story. --Maria Dolan
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 109 more reviews...
 A Family Saga May 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Catfish and Mandala hit close to home. My mother's family live in Vung Tau. So, when I read passages about it, it intrigued me. And it didn't disappoint.
Despite what readers believe, this memoir isn't about Vietnam. Catfish and Mandala tells a family saga--a Vietnamese family saga. It speaks to you about family tragedy, disaster, and redemption. This includes immediate family, extended family, and the family left behind after the war. Locals called Mr. Pham brother, uncle, etc. The metaphor glares at you, sometimes blinds you to it, but don't miss it.
This work broke my heart, but I recommend it to children born from that land and know little to nothing about it--like myself.
I do have one complaint, though, as a fellow writer: On their/his hams. If I see that phrase ever again, I will scream. I lost count after reading it the sixth time. One pass at an unusual phrase takes notice, but over six jars readers to a halt. Otherwise, I loved this book.
Wolfe
 A beautifully wrought return to one's complicated past April 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book embraces so many themes, so delicately, wrenchingly and compassionately. The center plot is a return to Vietnam by a young Vietnamese American which his family fled years ago to live in the United States. However, it is far beyond cross-cultural travelogue; it inhabits the American as well as the Asian psyche with such scary acuity, and takes us into an inner landscape where few can go....without this author as guide. The prose is elegant and luminous; the situations tragic, comic, ludicrous; terrifying. The tone I felt was one of battle fatigue but transcended by unrelenting steel: this one was meant to survive and to tell it all.....
 Catfish and Mandala March 3, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is about a Vietnamese-American man looking for his identity in his homeland. Like many Vietnamese who were children when South Viet Nam fell to the communist in 1975, Mr. Pham's family fled to America where he grew up straddling two cultures. While his writing about biking though Viet-Nam is witty, observational, and realistic, I somehow felt sadden for him because of his Viet-kieu's experience, a terminology used for expats. Over all his story made many generalizations about a very complex and exciting country. I am too a Viet-kieu. What I found is a country full of eager young optimistic people wanting a better life for themselves, their families, sometimes - for better or worse - at any price. Yes, there are poverty and corruption, but there also exist the dignity and quiet grace of a peasant woman who gets up at crack of dawn, earning a meager wage for the day to feed her family because it's her duty. Mr. Pham chose to go back to America with his ''privileges'' and his ''opportunity'' still at a lost for his identity. Readers should not accept Mr. Pham's experience as those of the other Viet-kieu's in Viet Nam.
M. Vo
Andrew's website is at www.andrewxpham.com, other info January 21, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Andrew X. Pham's other works and notables:
* Pham, Andrew X. The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars. This title will be released on June 3, 2008.. ISBN 030738120X.
As translator:
* ng Thuy Tram. Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram. ISBN 0307347370.
Notables: Kiriyama Prize, Whiting Writer Award, QPB Nonfiction Prize, Guardian Shortlist Finalist, NY Times Notable Book of the Year, Oregon Literature Prize.
Andrew X. Pham's website is at www.andrewxpham.com
a random and beautiful encounter July 9, 2007
i was travelling alone in Lhasa, Tibet and found this book in Makye Ame restaurant. i started reading and couldn't put it down. it gave me true enjoyable solitude on my lonely journey. loved it. i spent the last two days reading it in that restaurant. ordered a copy from Amazon last week and i can't wait to finish it.
my heartfelt thanks to Mr Pham!
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