Catfish and Mandala

A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

Author: Andrew X. Pham
ISBN: 9780312267179

Winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book PrizeA New York Times Notable Book of the YearWinner of the Whiting Writers' AwardA Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Book of the YearCatfish 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

Publisher: Macmillan
Publish Date: 2000-09-02

Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / General, Biography & Autobiography / Cultural Heritage, Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, Travel / Asia / Southeast

This book is available in the following Community Centers: Cross-Cultural Center (Location: Biography (BIO))