CATFISH AND MANDALA
A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
by Andrew X. Pham

Farrar Straus & Giroux. September 1999. 344 pp. $25

Andrew Pham has cycled through varied cultural and physical landscapes including Japan, Vietnam, Mexico, California and the U.S. Pacific Coast. And he writes about his travels in powerful, personal and provocative fashion. Pham's first book, Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam is about his 1100 mile bicycle trip culminating in Vietnam, the country of his birth, and through his memories of life there and in the United States, where his family immigrated when he was ten.

Catfish and Mandala was originally conceived as a travel log of Pham's bicycling trip through Vietnam. Early short articles that ran in Silicon Valley papers reflected this, telling the story of the former engineer from San Jose, California who became a writer and took off for adventure travel in his native Vietnam.

But then Andrew Pham's purpose changed. He realized the true story of his trip took place as much in the United States as it did in Vietnam; and, it existed as much in the memories provoked along the way, as it did in the events experienced. Instead of being about one time in one place, the book became a mosaic of Pham's experiences in different times and places. This meant mining painful personal experiences and family secrets, including the suicide of his transsexual sister, to whom the book is dedicated. But he wanted to do it for himself, his sister and for all those Vietnamese Americans and others, who are trapped between worlds. The goal: to liberate.

As shared in Catfish and Mandala, Pham's trip back to his native country brings him face to face with childhood memories of Vietnam at the end of and just after the war, including his family's first failed attempt to leave the country and his father's imprisonment as a POW. The Pham parents leave behind a difficult life in the old world, with the goal of providing a better one for their children in the new world. The Phams leave Vietnam in 1977, and settle briefly in Shreveport, Louisiana before moving to the more populous refugee community of San Jose, California. Pham portrays a family and people who survive through perseverence and whatever means necessary - like the catfish of his book's title. In essence, Pham says, people, like catfish, are bottom feeders, a fact most apparent when they are under siege and must scrap together an existence.

Along his trip, Pham sees a modern Vietnam with a changing identity. Saigon is the embodiment of modern Vietnam - with capitalism creating entrepreneurs and rich men, as well as prostitutes and beggars. The ity represents hope and terror. Pham's characterizations of Vietnam as dualistic and double-edged extend to characters in the book, like Sun who is a womanizer, a pimp, a drunk, as well as a Buddhist, a Taoist, a philosopher and a Catholic. But Pham resists nostalgia, sentimentality and the blame game. Unlike many who blame the forces of development for problems like prostitution, poverty and pollution, Pham says these problems are rooted in Vietnam and always existed to some degree. He also talks of potential, opportunities of new freedom. Pham's view of modern Vietnam is many-sided and circular like the mandala of his book's title.

Pham's vantage point is that of a "viet quieu," or foreign Vietnamese. Cycling around Vietnam from Hanoi to Saigon, Pham is treated with a mixture of resentment, envy, curiosity and confusion by the Vietnamese. Some mistake him for a Japanese or Korean and most cannot understand why he, now of the rich land, chooses a primitive bicycle to travel the countryside. Although of the same skin color and born to the same land, Pham is resisted on some level by most of the Vietnamese he meets.

But Pham develops a few close relationships, including a romantic one with a woman named Kim. Pham tells her he has not really loved anyone in his life. In the interview for this article, Pham acknowledges that the inability to fully love is related to the search for identity and the understanding of self. He does not believe any one can fully love another until they understand themselves.

Understanding oneself is often more complex for the immigrant or the hyphenated American who must reconcile different cultural messages and values. Catfish and Mandala depicts Andrew and his sibling's experience as Vietnemese-Americans growing up in the U.S. Again Pham resists, even rejects, the sentimental or soft perspective. Pham bluntly says it is not possible nor entirely wise to live in a new world with, what he calls, old world rules. There can be tragic consequences. In the Pham family, like many immigrant households, the parents want the best for their children but on their own terms.

In Catfish and Mandala, the conflict between old and new rules is most tragically borne out in the story of Chi, Pham's transsexual sister. After years of cross-dressing for which she is berated and beaten, Chiruns away, gets a sex change operation and becomes a man. But later, the yoke of years of rebuke and shame are too much, and Chi commits suicide. Even in the wake of Chi's death elders, such as Old Kwan apply the old rules and say Chi was "too selfish, too into herself." Or, she was called too American - too concerned with expression of self and identity.

In Vietnamese culture, Pham explains, a child is born to sacrifice, respect and fulfill the wishes of one's parents. This conflicts, he says, with American rules which say a child is born to express their potential and follow their dreams. Pham followed his own and was widely considered a bum, he recalls. In his community, respectable jobs were of the "LEAD" category - lawyers, engineers, accountants, doctors. But Pham quit his own Silicon Valley engineering job to become a writer.

Life is bittersweet for Pham now. Catfish and Mandala has generated critical acclaim, winning Pham the 1999 $30,000 Kiriyama Prize for the outstanding non-fiction book contributing to greater understanding among peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim. And it has won him recognition by own community. At readings, Vietnamese American members in the audience ask Pham for advice on returning to visit Vietnam, or on coming out as gay to one's parents. But Vietnamese American press that run articles on the book still include caveats and caution, diminishing the transexual and gay storylines or calling them "out of the ordinary."

The community will no doubt hear additional diverse voices from those Vietnemese-Americans who immigrated in the seventies and eighties and are now coming of age. This group constitutes a substantial part of the demographic of Vietnemese Americans who reported a population of 615,000 in the 1990 Census and are estimated to number over 1.1 million now. They are most highly concentrated in California, the Washington D.C. area, Texas and Washington State.

Pham identifies as an Asian American and is happy to have imparted messages to his community. Yet the author of Catfish and Mandala, which is so richly about cultural identity, paradoxically says he just wants to be "an ordinary white boy." An ordinary white boy, Pham explains, can announce he is embarking on a transcontinental bicycle trip and be applauded for a "life-seizing" choice. An ordinary white boy is afforded a greater freedom to express his personal identity. And, an ordinary white boy in America is not met by people who ask, "where are you from?"

Mr. Pham sees peace in a world where race and culture are less pervasive and defining characteristics. In fact, if Pham fathers a child, he hopes it is of mixed race. If races blend, they are less likely to go to war against each other, Pham says. What about culture under this scenario? Pham does not overlament its loss. Culture is a construct, he says: the "house the self lives in."

Mr. Pham speaks deliberately about his philosophy. One senses he is aware that his words might provoke some to wonder if his beliefs constitute a form of Asian racism. But Pham has thrown off the yoke of tradition and expectation. He doesn't care what people think. Pham's Catfish and Mandala is his sensitive, brave and deeply honest story - very much about race, culture and sexuality - but with the goal of transcending them.

Written by Frankie Clogston, 1/12/00