Rating: 
Summary: Vietnamese or American? A satisfying answer.
Review: I really enjoyed this book. I thought it was a semi autobiographical novel at first but the acknowledgments (which come after the book) make it sound as though the book is nonfiction. It didn't really matter to me whether all the events in the book were real or not, as they clearly represented the experiences of the author's life and situation fully.
To begin with, this book is beautifully written. The author uses metaphors in an interesting way and often paints vivid and descriptive scenes with perfectly used adjective-nouns that are innovative and evocative, even if you would probably lose points on a college English exam or paper if you tried to use them :-) (What has your average college professor written lately, anyway?) :-)
Pham delivers a beautiful and compelling tale of a Vietnamese-American caught between two cultures. Like aspects of African-American literature or other multi-cultural writing, the story of an individual trying to find his or her place in a society they don't fully feel a part of brings about themes of identity and belonging. Most satisfyingly, Pham neither idealizes nor denigrates either culture. Throughout, positive and negative aspects abound as he explores his place in the center and tries to find what he feels are his roots. What is, is, and Pham doesn't pull any punches. He draws the reader in with everyday language and an effective, but subtle rendering of the problems before our protagonist. From there he takes his time to weave his tale, with due respect for the sensitivity that Americans have about Vietnam, for the men and woman who fought that war on both sides, for the country that existed both before and after it, and for all who were affected by it. He does this artistically and skillfully, weaving 3 connected tales at once, shifting through time seamlessly and with clarity, all to paint a thorough picture of the Vietnamese-American predicament. I would give this book 4 1/2 stars. It did get a little slow between pages 50 and 100, but I will give it 5 because I think that giving it four would short-change it. I should also mention that there are several very amusing tidbits along the way. A very enjoyable novel altogether, and recommended firmly by this somewhat-picky reader...
Rating: 
Summary: Bad
Review: ...I think it's very poorly written. I'm trying to read it as quickly as I can now so that I can move onto something better but I'm really struggling to finish it. To mention Pham in the same breath as Kerouac or Theroux is really misleading. He uses adjectives like "nature-happy" to describe one character and "frost-rosy" to describe a person's eyes. It's all very romantic but it doesn't actually mean anything.
Incidentally, I bought the book while I was traveling through Vietnam. I spent a month there and bought the book in my last week before moving onto Cambodia and Thailand. I don't think it represents the country at all well and some portions were downright incorrect, false, and exaggerated.
It's just a bad book. Kerouac and Theroux wrote enough good books so that you shouldn't have to read this bad one.
Rating:
Summary: Finding Cultural Identity
Review: I read this book for my English Lit. Class and love it. Being a Southeast Asian-American, there are a mass of commonality mentioned between the two cultures (Vietnamese & US) such the smell between a Vietnamese guy & an American guy, a Vietnamese tradition to follow your parents not your heart of what you want to do in life...
Rating:
Summary: Finding Cultural Identity
Review: I read this book for my english lit class and love it. Being a Southeast Asian-American, there's nothing that Pham didn't mention between the two cultures (Vietnamese & U.S.)from eating fishsauce, dogs to the smell between a Vietnamese guy and an American guy...
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book...
Review: I finished this book in three days -- an accomplishment for someone who's a book collector, not a reader.I bought this book ahead of a visit to Vietnam, thinking it would be a good travel guide. It isn't. What it is is a reavealing insight into the psyche of being an Asian-American. It's about life, love, family. Read it.
Rating: 
Summary: The Craftwork of Andrew Pham
Review: Where in American writing did we cease to be classical copycats and take on the mantel of the American Writer? Hemingway argued that it was Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which identified the American novel and that particular style or writing by individuals now referred to as American writers. Andrew Pham, combines both a sense of journalistic license with some stylistic American writing in Catfish and Mandala. Which struck me as rather interesting. Searching for his roots, a sense of self, who and where he came from all cumulated from his ability and sense of the American literary style. Mr. Pham may disagree after all, it is his writing style, but that is how it reads to me. Personally, I find his style very good -- captivating me from start to finish. Other reviews on this book talk about the events of the story, I prefer to examine the style of this work. Again, Andrew Pham has accomplished a major breakthrough in his writing career with this one. It's read in colleges, book clubs, by bicyclists, travel buffs and tourists -- just to name a few. His style flows throughout the work... but the end just sort of happens. I thought perhaps an additional 100 pages or so may have moved the story of the trip and the introspection he experienced along a smoother path. So the ending just sort of happened and I was left a little perplexed... sort of like the end of a Clapton song -- no "outro" just "blat" and it's over. For the readers interest please note that this work has been well received by both the 2000 Whiting Writers Award and the 1999 Kiriyama (Pacific Rim Book Prize). Thank you Mr. Pham. Thank you.
Rating:
Summary: won't ever leave my TOP 10 list!!
Review: Being raised in the Bay Area and remembering all those news stories of the "boat people", almost daily arriving along the Pacific Coast, because of this book I can now look at the Vietnam people in a different light. This light was discriptively portrayed, not only through Pham's eyes, but even more so in each chapter with his words. This contemporary well written book has captured my imagination with the reality of a man who lives today and has seen VietNam in a way that we American people will never see. The closest I will ever get is reading this book (which I have read twice). Pham's choice of words made my five senses come alive as I journeyed with him through his country and the pain of his family along with the loss of his sister. Andrew....keep writing and opening our eyes.
Rating: 
Summary: Where's Vietnam???
Review: Being a Vietnamese-American who has taught and lived in post-1975 Vietnam, I was expecting a lot when I picked this book up from a sidewalk book vendor in Saigon a few years ago. What can I say? Pham blows it. There are no Vietnamese characters of any depth in this memoir, but, as the memoir field and the market seems to dictate nowadays, seems to be a literary excuse for the writer to exorcise personal demons while maintaining a pretense towards art. As far as memoirs go, this is one of the most self-indulgent ones I have yet to read. This memoir works in the sense that Pham is the ideal of everything I dislike about certain Vietnamese-Americans; vain at the expense of other's self dignity, easy to complain while lacking the sensitivity to make even the smallest concessions, and self-important to the point of not even realizing that his admission of his conceit is an acceptance only in words. The pretty things Pham tries to say in this book, the lush descriptions and mild poesy, is just fluff. His actions speak louder than words. He paints shallow caricatures of just about everyone he meets on the road, from his one paragraph descriptions of his ... buddies in Saigon (whom we never get to know, though they seem the most interesting characters in the book), to every soldier he meets on the road, to even the bar girl Kim, who Pham ends up using (in a literary sense, though I'm sure he had his fun) as some sort of convenient stereotypical "mail-order bride" love interest. There are some fine sentences and descriptions in this work, but as a whole, he whines far too much. There were points in the story when I was just begging Pham to argue the point, make the connection, but he always failed to create the subtext, and it all eventually came off as a shallow representation of a complex country and people. Perhaps that was his point, to contrast his own lack of understanding and empathy for Vietnam, caught as he is between two worlds. But if that is the case, he doesn't help himself as an author, because he then forces the reader to look elsewhere for the true story. In the end, after his buddy Cuong awakens him to his own lack of awareness about his straddling of two cultures, Pham throws it away, using it as he does everything else in this book to "save face." He always retains his nobility of character. What a bunch of [stuff]. He tries a little too hard, the model "model-minority." A good writer integrates the landscape and memory in a way that gives them significance rivaling that of his most real characters (I'm sorry, but the last couple of chapters end up being typical memoir mush - superfluous, self-gratifying reflection), but as he has nothing beyond paper cut outs for people in this book, and his questions of self-identity have been plumbed and written about much more eloquently and profoundly by many other Asian-American authors, "Catfish and Mandala" seems a prostitution of ideas. It is good that Vietnamese-Americans of his generation are writing, and Pham seems to have stylistic talents that could make for much better literature if he can eventually learn an artistic sensibility not based on topical pandering and exoticism. We're still waiting for the first great Vietnamese-American author. And please, no more memoirs!
Rating:
Summary: 4.5 stars for this enjoyable gen-x biking story
Review: Biking on a shoestring budget through the third world to find oneself suggests another mediocre gen-x travelogue, but mr. pham surprises with a book that quietly grows and grows & grows on the reader. The bicycle trip is spiced with enough memories of the fall of Saigon, escaping Vietnam, and dysfunctional immigrant family life starting over in America to keep us non-bikers entertained. his descriptions of bicycling, being an asian American, and a 'foreign-vietnamese' are thoughtful and well-done. It's not the great american novel, but it's a well told story worth a read.
Rating:
Summary: A Luminous Book
Review: Elegant and eloquent, this book combines travelogue and memoir to create an affecting, human look both at Vietnam and the experience of Vietnamese-Americans. The writing is extremely graceful; my only beef is that he overuses nouns as verbs.
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