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...
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Jun 17, 2011
Nikki
rated it: 
This was a moving and engaging memoir. Mr. Pham is very skilled at vivid description and is careful not to over-sentimentalize the often deeply personal subject matter. He is honest about his family and about his own feelings in a way that is highly admirable. His quest to explore his own identity is something that many people can relate to. Although his situation is rather specific, the book deals with themes that are fairly universal. I would strongly recommend this title to anyone that e
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Dec 11, 2008
Sara
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This book created a clear image of post-war Vietnam, but while I enjoyed following Pham's travels, I never became truly engaged with the book. Although the author constantly reiterated his deep and troubling ambivalence about his native land, his struggle failed to grab my heart. The book contained some scenes that were theoretically poignant and wrenching, but I just didn't think Pham's writing was strong enough to break through the screen of journalistic observation and actually convey authe
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Mar 30, 2009
Stan
rated it: 
This book was left to me by a friend who was passing through Singapore in early 2008. I started the book about that time but only just completed it.
Not that it was unreadable or anything like that. In fact, I enjoyed it. (Another friend who visited me finished the book in a day.) It's just that the story never developed a tempo/pace that propelled me forward.
It's a book about identity and history, about self, about family and all the things we don't say but wish was under More...
Not that it was unreadable or anything like that. In fact, I enjoyed it. (Another friend who visited me finished the book in a day.) It's just that the story never developed a tempo/pace that propelled me forward.
It's a book about identity and history, about self, about family and all the things we don't say but wish was under More...
Jul 03, 2011
Jane
rated it:
"Catfish and Mandala is the poignant, lyrical tale 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. Intertwined with an often humorous travelogue spanning a year of discovery is a memoir of war, escape, and, ultimately, family secrets."--BOOK JACKET. "There is Pham's stepgrandfather Le, the fish-sauce baron of Phan Thiet, who claims his anc
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Feb 28, 2011
Matt
rated it: 
I just got home from a two-week vacation in Vietnam, and as much as I loved the trip, the lasting memory of having read this book is a testament to the great power of books to take you to another culture and a greater understanding than touring a country itself. I would never suggest that a person can become more worldly by sitting and reading rather than experiencing things first-hand, but there are limitations when you travel. When you account for language barriers, cultural barriers, time lim
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Jan 22, 2011
Andrew Pham, who was born in Vietnam but immigrated to the US as a child, documents his voyage on bicycle to re-discover the homeland that he never really knew.
He travels from the Pacific rim to Vietnam, biking 2,357 miles to arrive in to his final destination, the motherland, where he visits notable places such as Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, and Hanoi, to name a few.
Pham camps out most of the time in a pup tent, in ditches, and eventually meets up with friends in Vietnam that provi More...
He travels from the Pacific rim to Vietnam, biking 2,357 miles to arrive in to his final destination, the motherland, where he visits notable places such as Ho Chi Minh City, Hue, and Hanoi, to name a few.
Pham camps out most of the time in a pup tent, in ditches, and eventually meets up with friends in Vietnam that provi More...
May 27, 2010
Vincent
rated it:
I went into this with high hopes, partly because I love travel books and partly because it was about Vietnam, a place that I have never visited but about which I am very curious.
The problem is that the author, An Pham, doesn't really want to write a straight up travel book. He changes the elements a bit by getting himself a tricked out touring bike which he proceeds to ride across most of the country, visiting places like Saigon, Hanoi and Hue. So the book is kind of about the quirky cult More...
The problem is that the author, An Pham, doesn't really want to write a straight up travel book. He changes the elements a bit by getting himself a tricked out touring bike which he proceeds to ride across most of the country, visiting places like Saigon, Hanoi and Hue. So the book is kind of about the quirky cult More...
Apr 13, 2009
James
rated it: 
What's fascinating about this book is that it illustrates one of the world's most prevalent fallacies: that if we can just get away from where we are and go someplace exotic, we will find ourselves and our lives will begin to make sense to us. Andrew Pham travels to Vietnam (which he and his family escaped around the time of the Vietnam War) and sees the country by bicycle, and leaves with an upset stomach and absolutely no understanding of the Vietnamese people. In fact, I would go so far as
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Oct 16, 2011
Patty
rated it:
This was another book I read to prepare for my trip to Vietnam. I don't think my experience will be anything like Pham's since he is a Viet-kieu (a Vietnamese who lives in the United States) and I am a white American. Also I don't plan to ride a bike from Hanoi south.
However, this book did make me think about the tourist experience. Of course, I bring my own biases to my trip. So I need to stay aware of those biases and try not to let them influence my views of the Vietnamese peopl More...
However, this book did make me think about the tourist experience. Of course, I bring my own biases to my trip. So I need to stay aware of those biases and try not to let them influence my views of the Vietnamese peopl More...
Apr 17, 2011
Natalie
rated it:
I foolishly purchased this book while in Hanoi and got it back to the hotel to realise it was a photocopied knock. Personal ignorance asside, I really enjoyed reading this book while travelling Vietnam. It brought some personal insight into the places I was travelling as well as a greater understanding of what it must be like to have to move from one's homeland. Though I felt that his memories of his family and their history was alot stronger then alot of his descriptions about his own travels,
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Dec 17, 2009
Adam
rated it:
Definitely enjoyed this book as a great peak into the many challenges faced by Vietnamese-Americans, not only at home, but abroad as well. Pham does a great job of relaying the inner-turmoil that arises, not so much from his own identity issues but those that others try to pin on him. While he clearly identifies himself as an American, it seems that others have extreme difficulty in doing so and this does nothing but create problems, for everyone!
Finishing up a month long Vietnam t More...
Finishing up a month long Vietnam t More...
Jan 05, 2009
William
rated it:
It was a little odd reading Pham's books in reverse chronological order, not because of the story lines but because of the writing style. Eaves of Heaven shows signs of maturity that aren't as apparent in Catfish and Mandala. This slight difference caused me to waver between four and five stars.
In the end I felt Catfish and Mandala met all the criteria I require for a five star book; it's very well written, the narrative is interesting, and it affects me in ways that stay with me over t More...
In the end I felt Catfish and Mandala met all the criteria I require for a five star book; it's very well written, the narrative is interesting, and it affects me in ways that stay with me over t More...
Mar 21, 2011
Angela
rated it:
I have a thing against being a tourist. I like moving to new places, but I want to actually live there, not just see the surface of other people's lives from the outside looking in. Reading this book had me thinking about some of the limitations of that approach - how impossible it can be to become a local.
Our author takes a bicycle trip up the Western coast of the USA, through Japan, and then around Vietnam. Descriptions of his journey are interspersed with memories of his early chi More...
Our author takes a bicycle trip up the Western coast of the USA, through Japan, and then around Vietnam. Descriptions of his journey are interspersed with memories of his early chi More...
Nov 03, 2010
Brenda C
rated it:
An important autobiography on several levels - it tells the story of a personal journey that is both physically and spiritually challenging; it is a study of the conditions of post-war Vietnam; it is a social commentary on the Asian-American who, in the end, must determine his/her identity since noone else seems to be able to figure it out!
There is an undercurrent of guilt throughout the book that eventually finds a kind of resolution by virtue of this young man's maturation, accep More...
There is an undercurrent of guilt throughout the book that eventually finds a kind of resolution by virtue of this young man's maturation, accep More...
Feb 23, 2011
Kit
rated it:
Catfish and Mandala is a lovely book. I read it slowly so it wouldn't end. From the first page, I was engrossed in the story of one man's attempt to make sense of his past and his present by integrating the two parts with a return trip to Vietnam, twenty years after his family fled. A gifted storyteller, Pham describes unflinchingly the details of his childhood in Vietnam, family life in a traditional Vietnamese family, the struggles of being an immigrant in southern California and the povert
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Nov 29, 2009
Mary
rated it:
Got this from a used book sale. The author apparently lives in Portland! He didn't seem to do much preparation for his bike trip (some of the scrapes he gets into seem like they could have been avoided with a bit of advance planning and maybe a map or two), and wasn't necessarily even on his bike much of the time, but that wasn't really the point. His family was significantly affected by the Vietnam War and a lot of his story is about this. Interestingly, he states that some of the individua
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Nov 27, 2011
Jason
rated it:
I'm a little biased as an expat living in Ho Chi Minh City and a bicycling enthusiast, but I really enjoyed this. It was interesting learning about the life of a Viet Kieu, an exile after the fall of Saigon returning to his home country and his various perceptions and interactions throughout various big cities and small villages. I learned a lot about my new place of residence although much of the information seems less relevant now than it would have been ten years ago.
I started readi More...
I started readi More...
Mar 30, 2009
Aaron
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
Feb 27, 2011
Diana
rated it:
As a first generation Vietnamese-American, I found this book enlightening. However, it was only after page 117 that I became engrossed.
Pham depicts very accurately on how life in America for Vietnamese-Americans is truly like--the struggles between ethnic warfare of inner city youth, poverty,
beaten to the point of numbness, juggling between Vietnamese and American cultures, being a "Viet-Kieu" and the role our identities are played in the US and VN, etc.
I gained More...
Pham depicts very accurately on how life in America for Vietnamese-Americans is truly like--the struggles between ethnic warfare of inner city youth, poverty,
beaten to the point of numbness, juggling between Vietnamese and American cultures, being a "Viet-Kieu" and the role our identities are played in the US and VN, etc.
I gained More...
Dec 31, 2008
Carol
rated it:
This book is definitely NOT about the bike, it plays only an incidental role. Being a bike tourist, I was really looking forward to a good story about a bike tour in an exotic, faraway place, instead found myself reading about eating disgusting foods and bloody diarrhea. Several stories are interwoven in the book, so the gross parts never lasted long. There was very little positive or uplifting in this book until the VERY last chapter.
To recommend it, though, I did learn much about b More...
To recommend it, though, I did learn much about b More...
Jun 15, 2011
Jenny
rated it:
3.5 stars. Catfish and Mandala is a travelogue of Andrew Pham’s cycling trip through Vietnam and serves as a launching pad for excavating his family’s past. Because he’s Vietnamese American, he gets treated with resentment from the Vietnamese who stayed but because he is also a partial native, he gains access to a part of Vietnam that most Western tourists wouldn’t get to witness. Like many Asian American stories, Pham is searching for home, a place where he doesn’t feel like an outsider.
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Mar 06, 2011
Bennet
rated it:
The language is as compelling as the journey.
"For some of us, by returning as tourists we prove to ourselves that we are no longer Vietnamese but Vietnamese Americans. We return, with our hearts in our throats, to taunt the Communist regime, to show through our material success that we, the once pitiful exiles, are now the victors. No longer the poverty-stricken refugees clinging to fishing boats, spilling out of cargo planes onto American soil, a mess of open-mouthed terror, wide More...
"For some of us, by returning as tourists we prove to ourselves that we are no longer Vietnamese but Vietnamese Americans. We return, with our hearts in our throats, to taunt the Communist regime, to show through our material success that we, the once pitiful exiles, are now the victors. No longer the poverty-stricken refugees clinging to fishing boats, spilling out of cargo planes onto American soil, a mess of open-mouthed terror, wide More...
Jun 17, 2011
Laura
rated it:
This book has been interesting to read while traveling through Vietnam, especially since it's from the perspective of a Vietnamese-American returning to his homeland for the first time in 20 years or so. I liked how he switched between the past and the present - I got a really good understanding of his life while keeping me wondering what happened in his childhood/what's going to happen next as he bikes through Vietnam. At times he got a little annoying... I didn't like how he kept going on ab
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Mar 15, 2011
Josh
rated it:
I read this while travelling through Vietnam and it paints an amazing picture of the country that tourists will never get to see such as the rampant corruption, especially by the police, the family structures and social codes that exist in Vietnam and what it was like when he was a boy before any western tourism. Also, he provides a good summary of the history of the country. I even found out Ho Chih Minh worked as a gardener in France at one point? More than this, the book is gripping and a tou
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Sep 20, 2010
Leilani
rated it:
Found this in the travel section, but it's very much a hybrid - partly returning to the land of the author's childhood, partly a description of his grieving process for a lost sibling and coming to terms with a troubled family history.
I found lots to praise in this book. His descriptions of escaping Vietnam after the war ended and his family found themselves on the losing side were gripping and intense, and the way he explored his mix of confusion and regret in his relations with More...
I found lots to praise in this book. His descriptions of escaping Vietnam after the war ended and his family found themselves on the losing side were gripping and intense, and the way he explored his mix of confusion and regret in his relations with More...
Sep 11, 2010
Carla
rated it:
This book is a memoir written by a Vietnamese man (who moved to the U.S. after a harrowing escape from his home country). His memories of Vietnam, his countrymen and his life there are clouded by time and the hardships and discrimination he encountered on these shores when he arrived as a 10-year old. Andrew Pham was looking for something -- trying to rediscover and reconnect with his homeland and round out his identity. So, he set off on a biking trip though Vietnam -- a bare bones, risky tr
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Mar 05, 2011
Lisa
rated it:
What a dreary, narcissistic book this is! Here he is, in one of those most interesting travel destinations on earth, a place that challenges and inverts the ideas of any Westerner whose history meshes with Vietnam because of the Vietnam war, and all he does is moan about himself. Coming from the wealthiest country on the planet, he has the temerity to scorn their energetic efforts to improve their pitiful standard of living: he thinks they're too interested in making money. He hasn't made the s
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Jun 10, 2009
Meredith
rated it:
I admit it took me probably 100 pages to become truly engaged, but I believe that was because there were so many characters at different times - I had a hard time figuring out who he was talking about and to which time period he was referring. However once I got past that I found it to be a very compelling read. The author writes beautifully and though I know basically nothing about Vietnam, I found myself relating somehow to his story.
It was difficult to read some times due to the s More...
It was difficult to read some times due to the s More...
Aug 03, 2011
Britt
rated it:
As I traveled through Vietnam, this book was given to me by a fellow traveler. It informed my experience greatly, explaining to me much about Vietnamese culture, history, and why Ho Chi Minh truly is admired and loved by the Vietnamese (among many many other things). All while taking us through a cathartic, and rich examination of Pham's own family and struggles in making sense of the impossible choices we must make in this lifetime. I would suggest this book to anyone who has traveled to Vi
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Apr 07, 2011
Alice
rated it:
Compelling and very readable. Pham presents an honest portrayal of himself, his life, and his countries. He weaves narratives from throughout his life thematically rather than chronologically, which helps to build suspense and make his points more clearly.
It is also a unique perspective of Viet Nam - a Viet Kieu's experience of returning there, where he is almost seen as more of an outsider than the other tourists. I could relate to Pham's feeling of not truly 'belonging' anywhere. More...
It is also a unique perspective of Viet Nam - a Viet Kieu's experience of returning there, where he is almost seen as more of an outsider than the other tourists. I could relate to Pham's feeling of not truly 'belonging' anywhere. More...
