Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
Andrew X. Pham
Language: English
Pages: 352
ISBN: 0312267177
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
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.
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. Since the day Chi ran away, I have wondered how utterly alone she felt. I have wanted to run away the way she did. In the years it took me to become an American, I haven’t been able to answer the one question that remained framed in my mind from the day she left: How did America treat Chi, one vulnerable yellow
mind. He is kind, brilliant, and thoughtful, as you are at your best. Kay has all the best parts of us. And I have caged my beast, have not struck in anger since Hien pulled the knife—the best thing Hien could have done for me. “My father was violent. I was an abused child,” Father said. “He was abusive. And … I was abusive.” I wished with all my might that he hadn’t said it. For him, it was too much. He was a man of the old world, given to the old ways, the harsher values. He wasn’t American,
to the night sky. A blackened form silhouetted amid unfurling orange. A Buddhist monk aflame. His last sacrifice. 17 Hope-Adrift The engine was running, but the sea had us in its palm. Our poor fishing vessel bobbed directionless, putting no distance between us and the mysterious ship in pursuit. The crew looked defeated. Mom muttered that it was terrible luck. First the net fouling the propeller, now this. She said to Dad, How could this be? The calendar showed today to be auspicious.
holding pen for live cargo in transition. Apart from the crooks, there were four groups at the compound: refugees like our family; dock clerks and government officials; guards who kept an eye on everything; and the compound staff, which included servants, caretakers, and kitchen hands. It was the staff who were up in arms, screaming that the culprit had disgraced them, soiled them. They shouted horrible things. A terrible humiliation on their heads. The chase turned the corner and rumbled
child. The baby girl took sick and became as red as chili-pickled cabbage, then as pale as ivory. She was feverish, then cold. They rubbed her with heat-oil, but the heat did not come back into her tiny chest, which was hardly bigger than a loaf of bread. No money for medicine. No silver coin to scrape the ill wind from their baby girl. They fretted and they summoned the midwife, but she could do little. No money for Western doctor, Western medicine. The baby coughed. She cried, would not suckle