A vibrant, picaresque memoir written with narrative flair and a wonderful, eye-opening sense of adventure, Catfish and Mandala is an unforgettable search for cultural identity. A Vietnamese Bicycle Days by a stunning new voice in American letters. He sold all of his possessions and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert, where he was treated as a bueno hermano, a "good brother" 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 Mexico he's treated kindly as a Vietnamito, though he shouts, "I'm American, Vietnamese American!" 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. His father had been a POW of the Vietcong his family came to America as "boat people." His sister committed suicide, prompting Andrew to quit his job. Born in Vietnam and raised in California, he held technical jobs at United Airlines-and always carried a letter of resignation in his briefcase. A Vietnamese Bicycle Days by a stunning new voice in American letters.Īndrew X. PHAM is the author of the memoir Catfish and Mandala (winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Award) and the translator of Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram, published by Harmony in September 2007.He is the recipient of a Whiting Award and lives in Hawaii.
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