I’m a Vietnamese-American writer, traveling and living in Asia for the past two decades. I have published a bicycle travel memoir, a Southeast Asian cookbook, a Vietnamese biography, an essay collection about escaping abroad, and a translation of the most famous Vietnamese diary. I am a professional hammock weight, wine taster, foodie, and connoisseur of Asian literature.
I wrote...
Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
By
Andrew X. Pham
What is my book about?
Catfish and Mandala is the story of an American odyssey—a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam—made by a young Vietnamese-American man in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland. Intertwined with an often humorous travelogue spanning a year of discovery is a memoir of war, escape, and ultimately, family secrets.
Andrew X. Pham was born in Vietnam and raised in California. His father had been a POW of the Vietcong; his family came to America as "boat people." Following the suicide of his sister, Pham quit his job, sold all of his possessions, and embarked on a year-long bicycle journey that took him through the Mexican desert; on a thousand-mile loop from Narita in South Korea to Kyoto in Japan; and, after five months and 2,357 miles, to Saigon, where he finds "nothing familiar in the bombed-out darkness." In Vietnam, he's taken for Japanese or Korean by his countrymen, except, of course, by his relatives, who doubt that as a Vietnamese he has the stamina to complete his journey ("Only Westerners can do it"); and in the United States he's considered anything but American. A vibrant, picaresque memoir written with narrative flair and an eye-opening sense of adventure, Catfish and Mandala is an unforgettable search for cultural identity.
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The Books I Picked & Why
From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey
By
Pascal Khoo Thwe
Why this book?
A Paduang tribesman journeys from a distant mountain village to Mandalay to become a university student but soon finds himself caught up in protests against the military dictatorship. He becomes a revolutionary and fights in harrowing battles. Somehow through it all, he escapes and, thanks to a random friendship with a stranger, journeys to England to study at Cambridge University. Exquisitely detailed and lyrically written, his memoir stands as a fine work of literature, rare and utterly unique. Consider it a travel memoir in reverse.
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A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound Travels in the Far East
By
Tiziano Terzani
Why this book?
Terzani is one of those grizzled war correspondents from the old days, a man of vast knowledge and keen observations. He is gifted with the storyteller’s tongue and the artist’s eyes. His travels, adventures, and reflections, noted over two decades ago, are as timely today as ever. This is a must-read semi-modern classic.
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The Lover
By
Marguerite Duras,
Barbara Bray
Why this book?
Travel back in time to colonial Vietnam with this exquisite memoir about a girl’s coming of age in an exotic land. Duras’ narrative voice is magic itself—at times soft as silk, and at other times, hard, brilliant as a diamond. Read it for tone. Read it for wisdom. Read it for the first love that echoes for a lifetime. Fly across the decades, down the length of a lifetime, within a hundred pages.
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Iron & Silk
By
Mark Salzman
Why this book?
This classic about a young American teacher’s adventures in post Cultural Revolution China set the standard for “travel memoir”. Salzman’s journey is captivating and unique because it is, at its core, a love story with the country, the culture, the people, and martial arts—the sort of adoration that could only manifest in youth. He gives himself entirely to the experience and, thus, takes the reader along with him. A wonderful book that lingers in the memory for decades.
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Survival in the Killing Fields
By
Roger Warner,
Haing Ngor
Why this book?
There are beach reads and there are must reads. Ngor’s memoir is the latter, preferably consumed in the secure comforts of one’s own home. Known for his Oscar-winning role in the movie The Killing Fields, Ngor is a Cambodian doctor who survived the country-wide massacre committed by the Khmer Rouge (who were funded by the Chinese Communists). He narrates his personal journey through the deepest horrors in human history, full of savagery, unrelenting brutality, and often sheer madness. It is a heavy story, difficult and disturbing, but also a story of the human spirit. We do not need to look far to find the true heart of darkness.
