Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

“For him, a gay Asian male, his America was outlined by the boundaries of San Francisco and Berkeley. He grew up in San Francisco and having Asian faces around him had become an integral part of life. Like most Vietnamese who have settled in the Bay Area or in Orange County, California, he couldn’t imagine living in the Midwest or the South, anywhere impoverished of Asian faces. No, to a minority, any white face could be a face of violence—a quiet fear we live with.” 

This quote references, Sean, the boyfriend of Pham’s brother, Huy. It touches on “home” being hard to locate for immigrants. Many ethnic and cultural groups feel most at home in communities with people like them. Pham struggles with this as he examines his own cultural identity. If he’s American, he should find acceptance everywhere, but this isn’t the case. The quote also highlights the theme of racism in America. 

“The canes broke over her back. The neighborhood women, wringing their shirttails, muttered that Dad’s cruelty was a curse upon our house. The last cane splintered into bits, and Dad stormed away to find another. Mom dragged Chi up and put Chi’s hand in mine. Take her to Grandma’s, Mom told me. Chi and I fled the house. I returned home that evening, but Chi never wholly came back into our lives again.” 

Pham’s father beats Chi violently for a perceived offense, one that Pham told on her for. At this moment, Chi becomes distant from her family. Pham’s guilt at his role in this led to some soul-searching after Chi committed suicide years later in America. 

“It seemed, then, that we could simply walk out of Vietnam and right into America, beautiful free America, somewhere at the end of this wondrous road. It seemed so easy I didn’t think about the thousands of boat people who died trying to escape Vietnam, or about the Vietnamese navy shooting at boats on sight. I almost forgot that this truly was our last gamble.” 

Pham’s family prepares to escape Vietnam in a fishing boat. Pham’s youth here reflects his innocence, and he only understood later the full weight of the risks they faced. It truly was a “gamble” in that so many things could go wrong that could end the trip and, very likely, their lives.  

“I am afraid. This unnamable apprehension isn’t something I had anticipated. The hardships of a pilgrimage lend no courage for facing mecca. […] So I toss back yet another lowball, this one a toast to my twenty-year anniversary since I had forsaken this city. Here’s to you, Saigon. I’ve come for my memories. Give me reconciliation.” 

Pham is conflicted as his plane prepares to land in Saigon. He gives a sense of how far he’s come and how far he has to go, all in the name of reconciliation. 

“Saigon traffic is Vietnamese life, a continuous charade of posturing, bluffing, fast moves, tenacity, and surrenders.” 

This quote illustrates Pham’s stay in Saigon before continuing his cycling trip. His days spent with Grandaunt’s sons are fast-paced like the traffic. The quote also foreshadows what life on the road will entail, requiring Pham to think fast in many situations. Likewise, it symbolizes Pham’s parents lives in Saigon during the war. 

“Binh hesitates as though considering whether to let me in on a secret. He draws a deep breath, leans closer, and says with utter conviction, ‘You won’t make it. Trust me. I’ve been around a long time. Vietnamese just don’t have that sort of physical endurance and mental stamina. We are weak. Only Westerners can do it. They are stronger and better.’” 

This passage reflects the cultural identity crisis that Pham has. He is both Vietnamese and American, but others view him as Vietnamese in one context and American in another. Here his Vietnamese identity takes precedence in his friend Binh’s eyes, while on the road he’s seen as a Viet-kieu, or foreign Vietnamese—that is, Western. The quote also reflects an underlying racism toward Asians that leads to an inferiority complex which stems from self-hatred.  

“While we were chatting, a child and her blind mother begged me for two pennies. I reached for my wallet, but Grandaunt, who had caught me giving money to beggars before, placed a restraining hand on my arm. I wanted to give the child my paltry change, but it would mean disobeying Grandaunt, and thereby causing her to lose face. Seeing my discomfort, Grandaunt said gently to the little girl, ‘He’s family, little one.’ The child bowed and moved on to the next stall […]” 

This quotation illustrates Pham’s status as both Vietnamese and American, and his being “in between” in a sense. His feeling toward the beggar girl is one typical of Western tourists, wanting to give something—no matter how little—to help alleviate her poverty. But Grandaunt intervenes and he obeys her, following the Vietnamese ways in this case. 

“My Saigon was a whore, a saint, an infanticidal maniac. She sold her body to any taker, dreams of a better future, visions turned inward, the skyscrapers foreign to the land, away from the festering sores at her feet. The bastards in her belly—tainted by war, pardoned by need, obscured by time—clamored for food.” 

Pham meets another beggar girl while out with Viet and Viet’s nephew. This time, he succumbs to his feelings and gives her money, despite Viet’s disapproval. This quotation states how he feels following the incident: Saigon has disappointed him, as it is indifferent to the suffering of so many of its own people. The children, the poor, and those affected by the war suffer as the city seeks to develop and even Westernize with skyscrapers. Pham feels that the human touch is missing. 

“I tell them I’m Vietnamese American. They shriek, ‘Viet-kieu!’ It sounds like a disease. The news travels down the procession and the excitement subsides. Half of the group peels away, losing interest since I am not a real foreigner. The others continue to tag along to talk, quite impressed with my trip, which I relay as they ride several miles out of their way to escort me to the city limit. I feel safe inside a buffer zone two riders deep.” 

In America, people view Pham as Vietnamese, but in Vietnam he’s often viewed as American. His status as a Viet-kieu sets him apart from other Vietnamese, however. Sometimes this causes trouble, with people assuming that he thinks he is better than they are, thus adding to his fluctuating identity. In this case, the children identify him as “not a real foreigner.” 

“Kim has never looked more beautiful. It is too late, but I wish I could tell her of the warmth and respect I harbor for her—for her tenacity, for her unblinking honesty, her selfless devotion to her family. She is very Vietnamese and very un-Vietnamese all at once. Fate is an obligation I don’t understand—the reasons that random beast passed over her deserving soul in favor of mine.” 

Fate is a “random beast” that often decides one’s future. For Pham, it is a challenge. He meets many people in Vietnam who make him question why fate “chose” him to go to America instead of others. 

“I know his type too well. I’ve dealt with this kind since I was a kid fresh to America. When you cross paths with anyone who doesn’t take kindly to your kind of gook, Chink, nip, you must come at him swinging. It doesn’t matter if he beats the crap out of you, you’ve got to fight back or it will only get worse. The only thing that will save you is the bottomless rage that burns in your deepest pit.”

When Pham is on the bus to visit the Minh Luong Prison, men get on to forcefully sell a kind of “cure-all” pill to the passengers. When Pham declines to buy some pills, the seller becomes belligerent and Pham prepares for a fight. As teenagers, he and his friends got into fights in San Jose, and his choice of words in this quotation reflects the racism he felt in American society.

“He parks us at a cafe far down the street, still within sight of the compound. I apologize […] Stripped of his joviality, he looks like an old man […] Empty now. Here is a man, the very sort, perhaps, the very one that my father had recruited when he was the Province Director of Propaganda. A sense of remorse opens my eyes to the old soldier—taxi driver, this remnant of my father’s world looking back at me with tired eyes. ‘Forget this place. Go see the world,’ Truong urges me. ‘Everything has changed. Your roots here have turned to dust. Nothing here to bind you.’”

Truong is the motorbike taxi driver who takes Pham to visit the Minh Luong Prison, and Pham is apologizing for taking out his camera to photograph it. Truong is angry with him because he knows how much trouble photography could cause for both of them. The passage highlights what Pham comes to understand more as his trip progresses: very little from his past life in Vietnam remained.

“I felt very sorry for him. He was so utterly alone in a foreign land, poor with the weight of the entire family to bear […]. For Dad, life in America wasn’t easy. In Vietnam, he was a teacher and an officer with two thousand men under his command. In Shreveport, he was a janitor in an industrial plant. It was physically demanding. His back was killing him. He’d injured it in the labor camp.” 

Pham’s father, who had a measure of success in Vietnam, could only work as a janitor when the family first arrived in America. This quote reflects both the randomness of fate and the steadfastness of belief. Pham’s father believes that hard work and perseverance would lead to success in his new country as it had in Vietnam. 

“In this Vietnamese muck, I am too American. Too refined, too removed from my que, my birth village. The sight of my roots repulses me. And this shames me deeply.” 

Pham visits his grandmother’s former house in Phan Thiet. The shop she had is gone, many of the trees are no longer there, and Pham’s beloved star-fruit tree in the back yard is dying. The inside of the house is filthy and smells. Pham is ashamed at the repulsion he feels for what he sees.  

“When we did move and the months had stretched into years, we ‘forgot’ Chi. She slipped away from us the way our birth-language slipped from our tongue, in bits, in nuances. The finer subtleties lost like shades of colors washed out under a harsh noon sun. Unused words dried up and faded away. Her name was not spoken. It became awkward and slow when we switched back and forth between English and Vietnamese.” 

This quote highlights how Pham’s family never really dealt with what happened to Chi. She becomes like a lost mother tongue. For Pham, Chi was almost like the sacrifice necessary for the family to become more American.

“How many times did he long to stroll the cobbled byways of Paris and the marbled corridors of London as an equal of any Frenchman, any Englishman? How often did he gaze upon a white woman and wish for the pleasure of her company, the faintest possibility of her caress? Maybe patriotism has always been at the core of him. Maybe not. But I know; I’ve felt the patriotic urge. Walking in shoes vaguely similar to his, I know this deep-seated fire—this yearning for self-worth—fueled by the feelings of an unadoptable outsider, is nearly irresistible.” 

This quote is about Ho Chi Minh, the revolutionary founder of modern Vietnam, and refers to his time spent living abroad. Although he was the leader of North Vietnam during the war, and Pham’s parents were on the side of South Vietnam, Pham writes that all Vietnamese respect his patriotism and desire to be free from the shackles of colonialism. In this quotation, Pham is comparing Ho’s experience in the West to his own—the feeling of a perpetual outsider. 

“‘Lieng-Xo! Lieng-Xo!’’—Russian! Russian! —the kids shout at me as they come rolling out of the school yard, a moving carpet of little black heads. In America, I was a Jap, a Chink, a gook; in Vietnam, a Russian.” 

Though Pham makes light of this incident later on the same page, it serves as a good reminder that context influences identity. In America, he’s an Asian outsider (and often called slurs of various Asian ethnic groups), despite being an American citizen. This quote shows the absurdity of labeling as identity by strangers. 

“Tell your friend Tyle. There is nothing to forgive. There is no hate in this land. No hate in my heart. I am a poor man, my home is a hut with a dirt floor, but he is welcome here. Come and I shall drink tea with him, welcome him like a brother.” 

Uncle Tu, the speaker of these words, takes Pham to his modest hut to spend the night, cooks dinner for him, and takes care of him the next day when Pham becomes ill. Tu is a veteran of the war but harbors no ill will toward Americans. Tu’s response here concerning Tyle shows the generosity of many Vietnamese, especially those without great means or official positions. 

“Sometimes it is as though every Vietnamese is seeking a godfather, a sugar daddy, a saint. In the stark neediness of their lives, dignity doesn’t ride shotgun to opportunism. But again they learned to separate both eons ago.” 

This passage comes after Pham’s encounter with Tin, the cyclo driver in Hue. Tin passes himself off as a poor, uneducated man with a wife and three children to feed. Pham learns the truth from Tin’s aunt, who lets slip that Tin is single and, in her eyes, just lazy. This experience stands in contrast to that with Uncle Tu (see Quotation 19). Tin and others like him treat Pham well during his trip, but often seek something (usually money) in return. As a result, Pham doesn’t know who to trust and is annoyed that some people see their relationship to him as merely transactional. 

“After Tin’s paid-for friendship, something in me dissipates. I simply let myself flow along, not caring that I ought to seek out more Vietnamese, meet as many of them as I can, to learn all our differences and similarities. I immerse myself in the company of other tourists, and when a Vietnamese assumes that I am Japanese or Korean, I don’t bother to make the correction.” 

This quote shows Pham’s frame of mind from the beginning of his journey (in Saigon) to this point (in Hue, on his way back from Hanoi). His feeling changes after what happened with Tin, and Pham now prefers the company of Westerners. This hints at the resolution of his identity crisis, in which he feels more American by the end of the trip. 

“I meet up with Carolyn, an Australian friend I made in Hue. We shack up in the same dormitory and spend a couple of days together touring the town. I rent a l00cc Russian Minsk and roar off with her on the backseat. We zoom around the countryside, trying to get lost, watching peasants work, me serving as her translator. They think we are married. I like touring with Carolyn because she is so openly enamored of the people, choosing to overlook their foibles much more readily than I do. In her company, I like the country more.” 

This quote illustrates Pham’s dilemma of being between cultures. Carolyn, a Westerner whose background is not Vietnamese, is less judgmental of the Vietnamese than Pham is. This fact highlights the nuances of belonging to both cultures, as Pham does, as well as the difficulties involved in navigating them. 

“I wish I could tell him. I don’t mind forgetting who I am, but I know he wouldn’t understand. I don’t mind being looked at or treated just like another American, a white American. No, I don’t mind at all. I want it. I like it. Yet every so often when I become really good at tricking myself, there is always that inevitable slap that shocks me out of my shell and prompts me to reassess everything.” 

Pham and his friend Cuong have an intense discussion about the meaning of identity, during which Pham has the above thought. Again, it shows the challenges of navigating both American and Vietnamese cultures. While Pham can sometimes use the former to his advantage, reality often returns to sober him up: the “inevitable slap” he mentions refers to his being rejected at times by other Americans, and even the racism he is periodically subjected to. 

“But now, I miss the white, the black, the red, the brown faces of America. I miss their varied shapes, their tumultuous diversity, their idealistic search for racial equality, their bumbling but wonderful pioneering spirit. I miss English words in my ears, miss the way the language rolled off my tongue so naturally. I miss its poetry. Somewhere along the way, my search for roots has become my search for home—a place I know best even though there are those who would have me believe otherwise.”

This passage reflects Pham’s conclusion about his cultural identity at the end of his cycling trip. He finds that his journey has become a search for home, which he now knows is America. This is the place he knows best, so he must ignore (or otherwise deal with) some people there who try to make him feel like an outsider. He is certain now that he is not.