Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam |  | Author: Andrew X. Pham
Publisher: Picador
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Seller: oncesoldtales
Rating:  114 reviews
Sales Rank: 80583
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
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
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Amazon.com Review
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 odysseyâa solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnamâmade 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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Showing reviews 1-5 of 114
 A foul smell from an all too familiar mountain... February 5, 2010
John P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
It's the question of authenticity, yet again, in regards to memoirs. The list is long, from the complete fraud of "Love and Consequences" to the highly embroidered "A Million Little Pieces." The editors and the publisher never seem to have any idea that something is amiss, if the marketing department is convinced the public is gullible enough. The "professional" reviewers serve as faithful adjuncts of the big house's marketing team; Pham is compared with William Least-Heat Moon, Steinbeck, Mark Twain, with apparently a straight face. Fortunately, thanks to Amazon, "non-marketing department" readers can express their doubts. As one of the 2-star reviewers put it: How much of this is fiction?
I would venture quite a lot. I am fairly confident that Pham is at least originally Vietnamese, that he and his family left Vietnam sometime after 1975, are now American citizens, and that he carried a bicycle back to Vietnam. Beyond that, there are a lot more questions than certainty. His trip back to his "roots" is a haphazard affair, from his own description. But what of his intellectual preparation? The reason he is an American citizen is the Vietnam War. But did he read just one of the standard accounts of the war by a Westerner, and even more importantly, since he claims that his family is originally from Hanoi, did he read one of the classic accounts of the war written by a Vietnamese, say, Bao Ninh, Duong Thu Huong or Dang Thuy Trang? He doesn't say, but based on his wild pastiche of errors of time, place, and facts concerning the war, I would assume not. His sources seem to be disgruntled Vietnamese-Americans and a hallucination of Hollywood movies. Consider:
- Pham accepts uncritically "Colonel Van's" story of commanding a mixed unit of Vietnamese and American soldiers, and mistreating the Americans in the unit, by making them dig deep fox holes, and then moving, and claiming the Americans only ate rice. Furthermore, and he is referring to American soldiers, "...he turned the green foreigners into a ragged, jangling mess" (p274). There were no such mixed units, and if there were, the Americans would have fragged him!
- He states that his father served as head of a propaganda unit in the ARVN (which he seems to like to call the "Nationalist Army"- does he realize that army was in China?) but never questions the validity of his father's statements about his post-1975 internment, and the number of prisoners that were taken out and executed, like an auto mechanic. (Chapter 2). Wildly exaggerating the "blood bath" that would happen when the NVA assumed power has been standard for apologists for the war. Next is: "On nights when it was very cold and the prisoners huddled together for warmth..." Pham claims his father was imprisoned in the Delta, near Rach Gia, where the coldest night time temperatures in the winter are 23 C. Next: "... a country outpost far behind the fighting front" (p19). There was a "front"?! And the Delta was very heavily VC.
- Shortly before the fall of Saigon, a Buddhist monk is burning himself in the street (p112)! (No, that happened in the `63-`65 era.)
- "It was the Americans who tried to maintain the tracks and the North Vietnamese who were adept at bombing and hijacking trains (p207)! What!
- Pham is in the northern part of country, not that far south of Hanoi, with "Uncle Hu," who looks at the surrounding hills "where I've killed Vietnamese and Americans" (p267). Americans were not in North Vietnam, certainly not in that area.
- One more movie image is the Green Berets, and sure enough, at the end of the book, he has a Vietnamese enrolled in this American unit for five years (p341).
Ok, so he was utterly clueless about the war, carried a mishmash of fantasies in his head, and promoted additional one. But of his actual experience in Vietnam, it was equally implausible, and loaded with errors. It is quite telling that at no time does he actually say WHEN he was there, and his movements are often vague, in terms of time and duration. I went "back" to Vietnam three times, January of '94, '95, and '96. He describes a Vietnam that is hard to recognize. I traveled to remote places by jeep, such as Dien Bien Phu, and Dak To, quite freely, without hassles. For certain, he was there after at least my first visit, since it was "post-embargo," and yet he claimed that "Both natives and foreigners must register ever night. Bureaucrats still keep a record of travelers" (p173). Simply not true, we went anywhere we wanted, never "registered" nightly. We were never hassled, and stayed in very, very cheap hotels in places like An Khe, and Kontum, without the police awaking us at night. My children and I biked all over Hue. Where is this "steep downhill" Pham describes (p278). It was pancake flat, and if he found a hill on the outskirts somewhere, wouldn't the cyclo driver go around it?
Then there is the really annoying matter about the money. If your funds are low, do you bike from the Bay Area to Seattle, and then stop for a tour of Japan? He admits he arrives in Vietnam with no gifts for his relatives, and seems to live off their meager resources for months. When he finally decides to go to Hanoi, he takes the train, with only a photocopy of his passport. Why? He is too poor to buy a regular passenger ticket, and rides in the caboose. For some reason money will be available in a bank in Hanoi (why couldn't it have been sent to Saigon?). He is still "poor" there, but manages boat trips in Hai Long bay (which are not cheap when you can't buy a train ticket!).
But the biggest question is: Did he really bike the entire length of Highway 1, from Hanoi to his home at Phan Thiet, near Saigon? He never really states that he did, he puts the words in the mouth of his friend, Cuong, and does not contradict him (p325). But half the road is missing! From somewhere slightly south of Hanoi, he next pops up in Hue. Supposedly, he went through Vinh, devastated by B-52 strikes during the war, and passed the "real tunnels" that are far superior to Chu Chi, just north of the DMZ. He supposedly biked over the Ben Hai River, with its monument which says: "Temporary international boundary, 1954-1975," and says nothing!? Later, he bikes right past My Lai, in a rush from Quang Ngai to Qui Nhon, also without comment or interest. As another reviewer asked, where is the Vietnam in his book? The incredible beauty of that long stretch of Annam, one of the most essential parts of Vietnam, is never described. In fact, he does the opposite: "...pitying the Vietnamese who believe with all their hearts that Vietnam, indeed, is the most gorgeous place on earth" (p155).
And then there is his patronizing, look-down your nose attitude towards the natives, without much contemplation for the fact that maybe 30 years of war against two imperial powers might have exhausted them and their resources. He is almost totally devoid of empathy, is constantly whingeing, and never seems to connect his attitude with some bad treatment he almost certainly received. Oh, and he is always describing the meals he has, all the ingredients, including the cilantro, but does not connect that with his bowel problems. At the end, though again he has "no money", he buys another one-way ticket home.
He does indeed give the "viet-kieu" (expatriate Vietnamese) a bad name.
I'm just warming up on the things I didn't like, but the above should be sufficient, and I invite others to identify other errors, discrepancies, and just plain appalling behavior. For the Vietnamese-American experience, I'd strongly recommend "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain." And I'll need to burn some joss sticks after reading Catfish which does not even deserve the lonely star.
 Drunken Losers January 25, 2010
Bookfestival (Aiea, HI)
I was really interested in reading about cycling through Vietnam; but who cares how much Pham and his so-called friends drink or how sick they get. They are disgusting drunks. I gave it three stars because when he's writing about Vietnam or his family the book is very interesting.
 history and travel November 28, 2009
cooking mom (Arkansas)
Andrew Pham offers the reader an intimate view of a Vietnam family's struggles before, during and after the war. His novel is part history, part sociology and part travelogue; all flowing together to create an enjoyable, yet sometimes sad reflection on a young man's life. One of the best novels I have ever read about Vietnam.
A beautifully wrought return to one's complicated past April 19, 2008
E. A. Fischer (Washington, District of Columbia United States)
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
M. Vo (Huntington Beach, CA)
3 out of 6 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
Showing reviews 1-5 of 114
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