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Summary: San Jose Mercury News Review
Review: Every once in a while a new voice appears on the literary scene that is at once lyrical, smart, unafraid and provocative. Andrew X. Pham is that kind of new voice. In Catfish and Mandala he combines no less than four genres--family memoir, adventure travelogue, the "going back" book and mystery--and he excels in each.While there have been other multigenerational sagas about Vietnamese families, Pham has approached his with an honesty and a kindness that is rare. In the travel adventure category, Pham gives Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, even Jon Krakauer a run for their money. He adds an entirely new dimension to the Vietnam vet "going back" story. Without diminishing the accomplishments of U.S. soldiers or the woes they experienced, Pham widens our perspective to include the Vietnamese veterans of that war. And if all this weren't enough, Pham has skillfully woven in a family mystery--the suicide of his sister/brother, a post-operative transsexual--with an unflinching eye and the rhythm of a writer who seems like he's been doing this for years.
Rating:
Summary: Spell-binding
Review: I picked up the book expecting a travelogue of sorts- one that I would discard after sampling a page here and a chapter there. I ended up finishing the book in one sitting, feasting on every word. This book is hardly a mere travelogue or a book limited to exploring Vietnam. Andrew Pham uncorks stuff that should go down as a classic piece of literature. The book's jacket does it a grave injustice painting it as a book about the writer's travels on a bicycle through Vietnam. That's like saying Romeo and Juliet is about forbidden love and leaving it at that. Hope the author gets the recognition he deserves some day. On a end-note, the book's contents were so spell-binding that at times I felt the stories were just that- made up figments of the author's imagination, not real life experiences. Yeah, it's that good. And it exposed the sham of my own mundane existence. Ugh!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding
Review: Andrew Pham's family escaped from Vietnam when he was a child, settling first in Louisiana, later in California. In this captivating memoir, he returns to Vietnam to discover again the country of his birth in a most up-close-and-personal (and American) way-on a bicycle. If Andrew wanted to find out how he was like other Vietnamese, he chose the most un-Vietnamese way to do it, since bike-riding for fun is not something much done in that country. Pham wants to see family and beloved places in his past, hoping that these will help him understand what has happened to his family in the present. There are two narrative streams, both equally strong. The first is Pham's trip and experiences in his former home; the second is the story of the Pham family's flight to the U.S. and their sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking adaptation to their new country. "Catfish and Mandala" works on both levels, offering both rich travelogue and exciting family history. For readers who have had little interaction with Vietnamese-Americans, this book is a terrific introduction to the people who are having an increasing influence in parts of the United States. For readers like this one, who grew up on the edge of Little Saigon (which now is so big it has its own exit sign on the freeway) "Catfish and Mandala" hints at what might be going on in the lives of these polite and mysterious neighbors. -Candace Siegle
Rating:
Summary: Captivating read!
Review: Most families hold tightly to secrets but in Catfish and Mandala, Pham courageously shares his family secrets, and in essence, we can learn from these lessons of life. In addition, this book reminds us that life is a quest/ a journey of discovery to live truthfully. I highly recommend Catfish and Mandala.
Rating: 
Summary: More praise for CATFISH AND MANDALA
Review: "A new voice . . . at once lyrical, smart, unafraid and provocative. Andrew X. Pham . . . gives Bruce Chatwin, Paul Theroux, even Jon Krakauer a run for their money."-Lisa See, San Jose Mercury News "Thoreau, Theroux, Kerouac, Steinbeck, Mark Twain and William Least Heat-Moon-the roster of those who have turned to their travels for inspiration includes some of America's most noted scribes. Now add Andrew X. Pham to the list . . . CATFISH AND MANDALA records a remarkable odyssey across landscape and into memory."-Barbara Lloyd McMichael, The Seattle Times "Part memoir, part travelogue . . . CATFISH AND MANDALA [is] a visceral, funny and tender look at modern-day Vietnam, interwoven with the saga of Pham's refugee family."-Annie Nakao, San Francisco Examiner
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Summary: Praise for CATFISH AND MANDALA
Review: "[Pham] fuels his memoir and travelogue, full of both comic and painful adventures, with a broad appreciation of the variety and vividness of creation. The people, the landscapes, the poverty and grime of Vietnam live for us through him, a man full of sadness and unrequited longing and love . . . a powerful memoir of grief and a doomed search for cultural identity."-Vince Passaro, Elle
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Summary: Publishers Weekly Review
Review: In narrating his search for his roots, Vietnamese-American and first-time author Pham alternates between two story lines. The first, which begins in war-torn Vietnam, chronicles the author's hair-raising escape to the U.S. as an adolescent in 1977 and his family's subsequent and somewhat troubled life in California. The second recounts his return to Vietnam almost two decades later as an Americanized but culturally confused young man. Uncertain if his trip is a "pilgrimage or a farce," Pham pedals his bike the length of his native country, all the while confronting the guilt he feels as a successful Viet-kieu (Vietnamese expatriate) and as a survivor of his older sister Chi, whose isolation in America and eventual suicide he did little to prevent. Flipping between the two story lines, Pham elucidates his main dilemma: he's an outsider in both America and Vietnam-in the former for being Vietnamese, and the latter for being Viet-kieu... Pham's prose is fluid and fast, navigating deftly through time and space. Wonderful passages describe the magical qualities of catfish stew, the gruesome preparation of "gaping fish" (a fish is seared briefly in oil with its head sticking out, but supposedly is still alive when served), the furious flow of traffic in Ho Chi Minh City and his exasperating confrontations with gangsters, drunken soldiers and corrupt bureaucrats. In writing a sensitive, revealing book, Pham also succeeds in creating an exciting adventure story.
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Summary: I believe this book is destined to be an American Classic.
Review: It has been a long, long time since I have been so moved by the work of a new American author. "Catfish and Mandala, A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam", by Andrew X Pham, is a book that invites one along on a trek through the minds, hearts, and souls of two nations. As a veteran of the Vietnam War I tagged along willing with Mr. Pham----at first. I soon found myself being pulled deeper into the past, a past that long ago laid waste to my youth and my spirit. Having read this book, I view the world in another light. I view the Vietnamese and American people with an understanding that has escaped me for so many years. To call "Catfish and Mandala" a travelogue is to call Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" and Kerouac's "On the Road" travel books. "Catfish and Mandala" is truly great literature. I only wish it had been written sooner.
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Summary: Unveils the complex relationship between Vietnam and America
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. 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 difficult stories of his family.
Rating:
Summary: One of the two best memoirs ever!
Review: "Catfish and Mandala" and "The Bamboo Chest" rank as the two best memoirs ever for three reasons: one is that they both deal with Vietnam; two, that one is by a Viet-Kieu, like me, and the other is by an American who had spent a total of five years in Vietnam (one of those years in a Vietcong re-education camp!); lastly that they're both about the same age as me--38.
While "Catfish and Mandala" is the story of a Viet-kieu haunted by his sisters death and the loss of personal ethnic history, "The Bamboo Chest" is the story of an American teenager, in 1983, who is so haunted by memories of living in Vietnam during that the worst years of the war that he goes back to Southeast Asia, becomes a combat photojournalist covering the leftovers of the war in the early 1980s, and becomes the first American political prisoner held in Vietnam since the of the Vietnam War: remember this guy is still only 18 years old! A wild and bizarre story that is actually a happy ending!!
Both stories remind me how deep the wound of the war is in the United States and in Vietnam, even after all the reparations and promises of wealth. At least two people have made some peace with that war: Pham with his wonderfully painted bicycle trip through Vietnam, and Frederick "Cork" Graham during his year of torture and solitary confinement when the US State Department finally got him out. And Graham's return in 1999 to see the changes and lack of change in the epilogue is doozy!! His accuracies about Vietnam, its histories and culture, for a non-Viet is truly amazing, reminding me how much I've missed by having hardly any memories of living in Vietnam, spending most of my life in the US have formed my knowledge of my own ancestry.
And both of their voices/writing styles: different, yet truly marvelous in their own write!!
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