Rating: 
Summary: One part travel novel, one part family saga
Review: Catfish and Mandala is about the author's journey to Vietnam to get in touch with his roots. Andrew is a Vietnamese-American that immigrated to the US shortly after Vietnam's reunification. "Mandala" signifies a bicycle wheel, as Andrew's journey is undertaken on bicycle. His stories of modern-day Vietnam are interdispersed with his mother's memories and his own memories of his childhood in Vietnam and the US. This story is mind-broadening -- I am amazed at the difficult trials he experienced at such a young age. Andrew also has to come to terms with his incredible luck when compared to people still living in Vietnam. Viet-Khieu - Vietnamese-Americans - are not always received warmly in Vietnam.At the same time that Catfish and Mandala reveals truths about Vietnam that no Westerner would ever unveil, it also tells about the racism in US society that many of us never experience. I was shocked to read about the subtle and outright racism that is a part of his life in the US. At the same time, the author maintains a love for the United States, only made stronger by his visit to his fatherland. The writing is fantastic. The descriptions are vivid, employing all five senses. I enjoyed the invented words - combinations of two English words - that Pham used to express concepts in Vietnamese. I am learning Vietnamese, so I could appreciate what he was trying to translate. They say that when you learn a language, you learn more about its culture and people. Andrew Pham bridges the gap for non-Vietnamese speakers. Words like "Brother-Friend" and "Neighbor-Relative" express the relationships between Vietnamese people. In Vietnamese, you use different words depending on the age, status, and intimacy of a relationship between you and another person. Andrew explains this early in the book, and so his phrases make sense. Catfish and Mandala, so far, is one of the best books I have read this year, perhaps the best. 24 hours after I started it, I had finished it. The writing is hilarious, tragic, vivid, visceral. I can see the beggars, smell the rain-damp air, visualize the author's changing relationship with his homeland as he immerses himself in it. This book definitely deserves all the awards and accolades it has already received and then some. I am of a mind to go out and buy it for everyone I know. For the past two days, I have come home from work, sat on the couch to read it, and not moved for several hours. Not even hunger could interrupt me. I have even attempted to read it in the car, during those long traffic lights. Such is the grip that this book takes hold, having a sense of when to lighten the story with tales of cultural misunderstandings contrasted with the intense stories of his family.
Rating:
Summary: Stayed up all night to read this
Review: As a Vietnamese-American, I felt as I was reading this book that he was describing parts of my own life. Like Andrew, our family was one of the boat people. Although my parents have ventured back to visit Vietnam, I have not. My mother kept telling me that I might not be ready for what I found there. I did not understand what she meant, but after reading this book, I now know what she was trying to convey. When you grow up in a country where most people look at you as an interloper, you dream of a place where people are like you and accept you. Andrew shows us that this hope of finding a place where we belong is misplaced. That perhaps a whole generation of us "Viet kieu" will only find acceptance and belonging in bits and pieces. Every Vietnamese-American should read this book. It honestly explores what it means to be Viet kieu. And it doesn't try to provide any kind of an ending, and so for that, I truly appreciated that he left us to deal with our own conclusions.
Rating:
Summary: On the road
Review: Andrew Pham's narrative weaves through various issues of being Asian-American, escaping Vietnam, cultural identity, sexual identity, racism, capitalism, etc., but what makes CATFISH a good read is that it's just a very engaging story. Pham has a style of writing that took me a while to get warmed up to, but he writes with humor and emphathy, and a candor that makes memoirs worth reading. Contrary to some other reviewers, I don't think it's fair to expect that Pham's book be written so you can learn about the country of Vietnam and its people for your own purposes. If that's what you want, get a Lonely Planet guide. Besides, he does say a lot about the country and its people, albeit through his biased, "Viet-kieu" eyes. And that's why you read memoirs--they're personal. Pham deserves some praise for being crazy enough to bike from San Francisco to Seattle, throughout Japan, and from Saigon to Hanoi and back. And his portrayal of poverty and change, of the ugliness it brings to the people he wants to love, is enough to recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Refreshingly Honest
Review: This gem of a book came into my posession in an unusual way. Usually we read critiques or receive recommendations from acquaintances that spur our interest. In this case I was on holiday in Victoria, Australia, and I came across a copy in a newsagents remnants rack!
I snapped it up on the cover blurb alone, and began to read. And read, and read, and read. The book is beautifully written and constructed. It moves along at a good pace, with very believable characters spicing every page in true fish sauce style. Pham tells a basic tale of his childhood in Viet Nam, the imprisonment and flight of his family following the loss of the war, his life in the US, and his odyssey by bicycle from California to Japan and Viet Nam. The interwoven memories and the current time travelogue slide off the page easily. Unlike some flashback strewn books there is no confusion here. Pham is an erudite young man who handles his joys and his utter griefs very well. I hope he publishes again but I suspect that this is a once in a lifetime achievement. There can be no disappointment in that. He has achieved a masterpiece.
Rating:
Summary: One of the Best, Absolutely Best Books I've ever read
Review: This book will live with you forever. My interest in this came from a Viet Namese friend who emigrated here with her family in the 90's. Thuy suggestion to read this book intrigued me, and from the first pages I understood thoroughly what she meant by the urgency in her suggestion.
This is a tale of a family desperate to leave the oppression and disillusionment that followed the North Viet Namese victory in the long struggle to be free from outside colonists. What ensued was a nightmare of epic proportions. It is only now that Saigon's influence is returning to open the country up to the possibility of getting on with life in any kind of hopeful manner.
However, as this tale recounts, this is a nearly "Killing Fields" Viet Nam. The perils and tragedies that this family suffers in order to gain their freedom will break your heart, inspire you and challenge you to never believe any formal officially sanctioned version of history, no matter who writes it.
There is a family drama at work here as well, and I will not give away the story. You'll find this book impossible to put down. Andrew also has a tremendous sense of humour, which saves and enlightens him as he makes the spiritual journey back to his homeland.
My friend believes that this acurately captures the dialectic of being an expatriate, yet still emotionally connected to the land of one's heritage. Whatever your own background, if you have invested any time in uncovering the story of your family, you'll connect with this book immediately. I've purchased this book three times. The first copy has circled the globe once among friends, the second is making its way through my friends and relatives across Canada, and the third is staying with me.
Positively, absolutely, this is one of the finest memoirs ever written. This is a classic in world literature. Not since Peter Mathiessen's "The Snow Leopard" have I read a book as profoundly moving as "Catfish and Mandela".
Rating:
Summary: Who needs a plane ticket?
Review: Andrew hooks you in the first few pages, and it's a hard one to put down. His clear and honest writing style puts you in Viet Nam tasting the food, negotiating with the locals, sweating through the humidity, wondering if you're going to make it out alive. What a marvelous adventure to walk (and pedal) in the shoes of this Vietnamese-American, and see the world through his eyes.
Rating:
Summary: Great Find
Review: This book was originally assigned for my Ethnic America class but we didn't have enough time to start it. So during the summer break I made a point to read it. Has to be one of the best texts a teacher has ever assigned. Most people are looking to answers about something, their life, current relationships, their jobs. Normally we feel pretty alone as we struggle towards the answers or at least a course of action or share with very close friends. Here we have the chance to watch someone else open to us completely. It's really comforting to find out that ultimately we all have the same questions. The things that launch us on that journey or the methods we choose to find them may differ but in the end the human race has so much in common and further more so much to learn. So that's my two cents. Enjoy the book!
Rating: 
Summary: A Story of Identity and Hyphens
Review: In Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham, Pham rides his bike to Oregon, to Mexico, through Japan, and across his homeland, Vietnam. This last destination dominates the story, a narrative that seems to run closely to Pham's life. The story lacks an intricate plot hoisted on recurrent characters, a common trait of road stories. This doesn't mean nothing happens. It means that seldom do supporting characters dominate the narrative long enough for the reader to delve into their psychologies. One acquaintance says, "I'll see you when I see you." This noncommittal, but worry-free attitude justifies Pham's style. Imagine Kerouac's On The Road minus two of the wheels, much of the debauchery, and almost all of the author's legendary notoriety. In the tradition of the road story, Pham's road trip parallels his quest for personal identity, an identity Pham finds to be hyphenated. Pham assumes his master identity to be his ethnic identity. And he discovers his ethnic identity to be, not fused and consolidated by a hyphen, but cleft and bastardized by a hyphen. Americans label him Vietnamese-American. Vietnamese natives label him Viet-Kieu, a pejorative that means something like a sellout of your country. Pham considers both countries his homeland. But both countries consider him a foreigner. His life is hyphenated across the Pacific. The titles of each of the chapters are hyphenated (headwind-tailspin). And the Vietnamese terms of address translate into English as hyphenated words (brother-friend). But there's also a semantic dexterity in hyphenated words that no lone word can match, a twofold diversity packed into one unit. The chapters form a montage; they alternate between Pham's road trip in the present, his family's past in Vietnamese-American Diaspora during the war, and his teenage and college years as he adjusts to American life. New characters appear so often and their Vietnamese names seems so homogenous (at least from my American standpoint), that I had trouble keeping track of their individualities. Their sheer quantity overwhelmed me. They blurred into a collective identity, which I soon assimilated into a heuristic: simply Pham's current acquaintance. Pham has a knack for capturing all things gastronomic and culinary about Vietnam. A few strong descriptions remain fresh in my memory: Pham downs a shot of liquor with a still-beating heart of a cobra floating in it, tinging the drink with fresh blood. In another, his mother cooks the immigrant family their first Thanksgiving turkey. But she bastes the turkey in Vietnamese fishsauce (Vietnamese put fishsauce on everything, Pham writes) and doubts the lengthy bake time. The turkey emerges from the oven as a hideous, yellow, undercooked hybrid of Vietnamese and American culture. But, in time, the Pham family successfully transitions to American life. They all succeed, at least in terms of education and employment. But there is one exception... Very early, Pham writes that his sister, Chi, killed herself. This begs the question: why? This running puzzle comes together in the retrospective chapters as we learn that Chi's identity, too, is hyphenated; She is actually Chi-Minh.
Rating:
Summary: A great find
Review: I was getting bloated with those novels about the authors facing enormous hardships and after going against the grain, they made it to the other side of the tunnel victorious. Naturally, they also made quite a bundle of royalty by sharing their feats with the readers. Well, for the young generations, we were a bit cynical and life is more complicated than that. We couldn't possibly relate or emphatise with those authors mentioned earlier as their feats were simply too two dimensional or perhaps, too good to be true. This novel was a great find, & we could comprehend about his voicing of trying to establish his identity. When Caucasians remarked him to go home, where was he supposed to go when USA has been his home for most part of his life anyway? The same applied to a friend of mine who faced the same predicament. He was born in USA & he speaks English & English only but due to the colour of the skin, he has been treated differently. Then, it's about the complexity of getting along with the family members when generations of young & new share very different values. The elderly would think that spanking their children would be good to the young when that was the only mechanism passed on from their parents & the parents before them. For the new country however, spanking is deemed to be counterproductive & would only have the young generation rebelling against the old. Then, it's the journey, the journey of seeing the world, & the journey of discovering our own self. When we get to our so-called homeland, what was supposed to be homecoming became anti-climatic when we wouldn't relate to to the locals at all even though they all look & speak like us. This novel is also an unplugged version of the Lonely Planet, destination Vietnam. We were given a glimpse of the best & the worst aspects of the country. At times, the stories were funny, at times, reflective, & at odd times, disturbing & heart-felt. Just like life, we laughed, we cried, we tensed, we enthused with the author's adventures & misadventures & gave a sigh of relief when he finally finished the round trip a survivor, albeit a bit shaken by the whole ordeal. The concept of flashbacks & going back in time & to the present had us readers begging for more. Definitely a worthwhile read & highly recommended
Rating: 
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: I'd read several 5-star reviews of this book and was eagerly looking forward to reading it. But I came away strangely disappointed. It's not that it wasn't a good book; it's just not what I expected.
If a reader hopes to get a feeling for the present day Vietnam, this is probably not the book to begin with. As a returning Vietnamese who left his country as a 10 yo after it fell to the Communists, the author experiences almost exclusively the underbelly of the culture and sees little to praise. As a vehicle for exploring his own conflicted relationship with his parents, siblings, extended family, and his own identity, it works well.
As a source for learning more about the length, width, and most of all the depth of Vietnam, it is less successful.
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