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

by Andrew X. Pham

My father has said “Good” to me twice in my life. This time is not one of them. The first “Good” was for making Phi Beta Kappa during my senior year in Aerospace Engineering at UCLA. I showed him the glowing congratulatory letter from the national honor society, then threw it away, too poor to afford the initiation banquet and too proud to request a fee waiver. He awarded me the second “Good” for landing a cushy engineering post at a major airline. That job was doomed from the start. I graduated out of college and right into a recession. Desperately hungry for work after mailing out a hundred resumes, I hooked one interview. During the office tour, my would-be boss, a turtle-chinned, red-faced thirty-five-year-old-timer, Paul, waxed on about the company’s expansion overseas and his getting an M.B.A. in international business to keep abreast of it all. “I like you,” Paul said, walking round behind me and putting a hand on my shoulder, which I didn’t like. “I like you people. Orientals are good workers. Good students, too. Great in math, the engineering stuff.” He smiled at me, reassuring, beaming. “Oh, I think you’ll do just fine here. We won’t have any trouble at all.” When I finally resigned, I was no longer a “good Oriental.” I even left behind in my desk three files titled “Stuff Paul Rejected Because He Doesn’t Know Any Better,” “Stuff Paul Rejected Because He Didn’t Want to Jeopardize His Promotion,” and “Stuff Paul Rejected Because They Didn’t Originate from Engineer...