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

by Andrew X. Pham

Before I left, Huy and his Vietnamese-American lover, Sean, took me to Sean’s San Francisco flat to give me safety advice. Even in gay-friendly San Francisco, they never ventured out without a canister of pepper spray, clipping it on their belts like a pager. Sean laid out his arsenal on the coffee table and told me I could have my pick: a stun gun, a semiautomatic 9mm, a snub-nosed .38 revolver, or a .45 Dirty Harry. I said I already had a canister of pepper spray, similar to the ones that mailmen carry. In Mexico, I’d given more than one rabid dog sneezing fits. “You’re crazy, man,” Sean said, shaking his head. “Forget about it. You know how many rednecks there are between here and Seattle? You’re Asian and who knows what sort of bigots you’re going to come across. They might give you a beating for fun.” He truly believed it. For him, a gay Asian male, his America was outlined by the boundaries of San Francisco and Berkeley. He grew up in San Francisco and having Asian faces around him had become an integral part of life. Like most Vietnamese who have settled in the Bay Area or in Orange County, California, he couldn’t imagine living in the Midwest or the South, anywhere impoverished of Asian faces. No, to a minority, any white face could be a face of violence—a quiet fear we live with. Once, when my brother Tien and I were driving through Arizona, a pickup drew alongside us. The scene played out as it had countless times before, the driver and his passenger gave us the ...