Rating: 
Summary: Hooked on Andrew
Review: In preparation for my month-long trip to Vietnam in Jan-Feb '03, I spent quite some time on Amazon, and discovered this jewel of a book! I am most grateful to previous readers of "Catfish and Mandala" who rated this a 5-star read, and who influenced me to purchase the book; they were right - it's 5-stars all the way!!!Traveling with Andrew is an unforgettable experience! He makes you crack up in one scene, then has you drying a tear in another. You can't wait to get to the next chapter! He's an author that has me hooked - I want to read everything he's written! Although I circumnavigated the globe some 20 years ago, and have seen it all, done it all, his tales instill some fear in me about doing it again (at 51, am I too old for this?). Yet, I think I can be brave once more. Those some 20 years ago, I remember being scared to the bone just looking at the map of where I was going (Egypt, India, Thailand, Nepal...), but taking a deep breath as the plane left the tarmac from Montreal, thinking "What will be, will be", I laid back, eventually enjoying the greatest 8 months of my life! Those 8 months have served me well over the last 20 years. The tales I have shared with clients over the years, be they from India, Jordan, Egypt, Taiwan or Israel, helped me shape a balanced view of the world, and indeed contributed to fill my coffers. So here I go once again! Yes, I'll brave it one more time, scared as ever! And what will be, will be. The risk (and consequent fear) is greater this time around, with my wife and 3 young children awaiting my return. I trust that I'll live to tell the tale for another 20 years...! And those who understand the tale will know that to travel, to risk, to experience the world, and to savor all its beauty and bounty, that's wealth!! Thanks, Andrew, for giving me the courage one more time! Highly recommended reading, even if you're not going to Vietnam.
Rating:
Summary: a physical search for an emotional path
Review: this book is well written and it has a story to tell: andrew's search for his being, his psyche, his goals, his identity...all on a bike trip in vietnam. i went along with him...could feel his anxiety, smell his sweat-reeking clothes, enjoy his sights. above all, this was a wonderful journey although i think his conclusions are inadequate but that is totally meaningless since this his journey, not mine.
anybody who has ever searched (i think we all have at one time or another)...read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Book but hard to read
Review: I liked this book but it could have been a little shorter and more interesting. I'm in the 8th grade and i don't read a lot but i liked this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Such a big disappointment
Review: I fully expected to enjoy this book, but it just turned out to be deeply disappointing. Sure, the premise is promising...a grown man goes back to a homeland he hasn't seen since early childhood. But besides that, the book is simply horrible. Pham's style of writing is so technical that a narrative that should've been wrought with emotion is about as evocotive as a grocery list. Pham is just not charismatic enough to be read about, though he tries to make himself look good by bad-mouthing everyone around him, including his own people and his family. If this book serves any purpose, it is to show the tragedy of Americanization on the Vietnamese people in the U.S., who unjustly feel that they are somehow superior to the Vietnamese in the homeland. This book offers nothing new to the Vietnamese-American experience because Pham's selfish impulse to make only himself look good clouds the poignancy that the book could have had.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: I did not want this book/the journey to finish. It took me to a world I did not know existed and opened my mind to a community in the States that has been almost completely neglected in popular American culture. I am grateful to the writer for bringing about better understanding of Vietnamese culture and Viet-kieu culture.
My only regret is that my copy was not accompanied with a map and photo's of the people and places he visited.
My entire book club read the book and we all concur: it is excellent - a journey of the soul!
Please write more mr. Pham!
Rating:
Summary: Deja Vu Vietnam
Review: My husband being Vietnamese, I have visited Vietname twice. Once we stayed with his family and traveled from his hometown of Can Tho (on the southern branch of the Mekong) all over the south and up to Saigon and Vung Thau. Then, in 2000, we took my husband's mother on a vacation with us. It was her first airplane ride and traveled from Saigon up to Danang, Hoi An, and Hue and up to Hanoi and Ha Long Bay.
Reading Pham's book together (and this has nothing to do with the fact that he and my husband share a last name) brought all the images flooding back over me and overwhelming me as they often did while I was there. Positive and negative reactions were drawn forth by the book as they were by our own direct experiences - it all rang true! The sights, the sounds, the smells, all ran directly from the page through my memory and to my heart. And although our trip was much shorter and tamer, we were constantly nodding and smiling. Our disparate experience of our trips detracted nothing from our shared laughter.
Andrew Pham is incredibly courageous in returning to the country of his birth, so different from the country where he grew up, and traversing it - with limited money and an open mind - by bike. Even more courageous is his revelation of his own mixed feelings about both countries and the fact that his own existence fits wholly into neither. And above all, his examination of his own family's pain and struggles, moved us more than once to tears.
Description occasionally overwhelms the reader, but it is almost all well chosen to portray the sense of his story and his travels. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Sensitive, In depth and Moving
Review: absorbing is not a word I use to describe Non-Fiction book often. However, once in a while, a good author can completely grab me by the gut and will not let go of my though until the end of the book is read. I enjoy Pham's sensitive, writing style and the contain of the book. Unlike some other travel/memoir like book which tend to get misty with sentimentality and romanticism, his tale is razor sharp and feels honest. Please give it a try.
Rating:
Summary: Delightful prose you can taste with all the senses!
Review: I've read the numerous highly recommended customer reviews and I just had to add my own praise and admiration for Andrew. Catfish and Mandala won over a handful of awards and was nominated for just as many. To mention a few: Pacific Rim Award for Nonfiction, Quarterly Paper Back Award, and the Whiting Writers' Awards; also, Andrew was nominated and was on the finalist's list for the Guardian First Book Awards. Basically, I think Andrew did not receive much media coverage and marketing for his book---for such passionate prose---an unfortunate case for 1st time authors; however, I wish him much success in future writings. Andrew, where ever you are, I am waiting to read your next book so hurry! On another note, I discovered Andrew's poem dedicated to the victims of the World Trade Center and want to share it with you: WTC Memorial A Vision I have a vision of you once again holding up our sky. In this, I can see you, lost husbands and wives coming home again, sons, daughters, lovers, and friends reuniting somewhere beyond time. As if this memorial is only a waystation, a beacon from where you are waiting, watching over us. For I do not want time to take you from me the way it washes away pain. For I do not ever want to forget that you existed for me, all the sweetness of you. For I can not hold back these tides. So I harbor a dream that the Twins will be reborn in glass, two monoliths of pure light, without floors or walls, only transparent elevators rising up their steely spines, and those precious stairs climbing their ribs, their hollow cores, into the clouds. And I shall walk down those thousand steps that kept you away from me, those stairways that took you to the farthest shores. And I, suspended in air, shall think of your courage and your beauty, as the earth tilts, the radiating streets, the gleaming buildings, the bridges, the rivers, all spinning away from me. As you have, I shall behold the roaming cityscape, the distant ocean, the blurred seam of the sky. I shall stand proudly beside your names floating in the space where you have been, where I can summon your images, your voices, your smiles. I shall see you glorious in sunlight. I shall find you wreathed in fog, moonbeams in your bones, through your skin. I should like to see sunset shimmer playfully on your faces. All saying that our loves, our lives, our dreams can never be wholly stolen from us. When night falls, our Towers shall stand like bright brothers in the darkness, guiding us, uniting us. And you, our dear ones now belong not only to us, but also to all the world. --Andrew X. Pham 9/16/2001
Rating:
Summary: More than a 'travel' book
Review: As with Joseph Conrad and Ayn Rand, Andrew X Pham has taken English as a second language and come to command it as only a few select native speakers ever have. In addition, the subject matter - an attempt to 'go home again' - is likely to intrigue a wide audience, from travellers, adventurers and dreamers to anthropologists, war veterans, artists, poets and freedom-lovers. Don't miss it!
Rating:
Summary: On Understanding
Review: This truly an amazing book..one that sticks with you.I cant stop thinking about it. This is well on its way to becoming for me one of those kind of books, a treasured classic, that you end up nearly memorizing and wearing out several copies of. It is a juxtaposition of the author's trip through vietnam on a bicycle, with his memories of the end of the war and fleeing vietnam after his father was released from a re education camp, his family's coming to grips with america, refugee status, success, and the realization of not really being vietnamese anymore. This is perhaps the most important message and I think greatest universal truth. All of us have an ethnic past no matter what it is. Everyone has to come to grips with that past and understand it and in through that act of understanding, a part of this new nation. This is a book, powerful in meaning, but an honest and simple book. It is not pretentious, but its simplicity is its strength. This is a rare book which should be cherished. At the end we can all say to one another "Yes Brother...Welcome Home."
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