Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam is the story of Andrew X. Pham known as An, and his struggle with his own identity as neither a Vietnamese nor an American as well as the story of his sister Chi and her lifelong struggle to understand herself. The story begins with An as a nine year old boy in a post war Vietnam. An’s family is planning to embark on a treacherous voyage to escape communist Vietnam for the United States by boat. The story focuses on An and his sister Chi, who is searching for her identity along with An. However, Chi’s identity search is not like that of An’s. I will focus specifically on chapter 8 from Pham’s book, titled Last Gamble, which is featured in our book Coming …show more content…
Pham’s story is undoubtedly a common story of people from war torn countries. He is neither a citizen of the country he has fled, nor an accepted member of the society is has relocated to. Pham wrote Catfish and Mandala, as a narrative of the story of himself trying to discover who he was, while on a journey back to Vietnam. In chapter eight of Phams book, the Last Gamble, Pham was only nine, he was Vietnamese, and enjoyed his life in Vietnam. Pham was unaware of the hardships he was about to encounter both during his journey to the United States and once his family arrived at their new home. While living in the United States Pham learned how Vietnamese traditions were not accepted in his new country. He learned ho Asians are stereotyped. Even the Vietnamese Pham encounters in the United States do not accept his family. Pham left what he believed was a good life in Vietnam, enjoying a middle class upbringing for a life of poverty in the United States. Pham was able to benefit from an American education and eventually became an engineer, but even this led to racially motivated misgivings that eventually helped lead Pham to begin his two wheeled journey back to his ancestral …show more content…
How does a country rebuild itself? Perhaps this is why I was drawn to this particular story. However, Andrew X. Pham’s book Catfish and Mandala, is more than a story about surviving post war Vietnam. This is a story about Pham and his sister Chi discovering who they are. In chapter eight of the story which I focused on, Pham loved and enjoyed Vietnam, and Chi loved Phan Thiet, and Grandma Le. Chi was free to be herself while living with Grandma Le, and perhaps most importantly she was away from her father. During this time, Pham was eager for his journey towards a new life in America, but was unaware of the challenges he would face. As cliché is the term coming of age is, it is the title of the book I pulled Catfish and Mandala from, and is fitting for Andrew X. Pham’s story. Pham’s coming of age story is one that spans continents and years. He was young when his family left Vietnam for a better life, that Pham never felt accepted in. It took the suicide of his transgendered sister and the racism he experienced in everyday life for him to begin his journey back to Vietnam. Even upon his return to Vietnam he was not welcomed by the Vietnamese. In America he was called a number of racial slurs, but never recognized as anything more than what stereotypes followed him from Asia. When he returned to Vietnam, the Vietnamese called him Viet-Kieu, which means foreign Vietnamese. It was a
In A Viet Cong Memoir, we receive excellent first hands accounts of events that unfolded in Vietnam during the Vietnam War from the author of this autobiography: Truong Nhu Tang. Truong was Vietnamese at heart, growing up in Saigon, but he studied in Paris for a time where he met and learned from the future leader Ho Chi Minh. Truong was able to learn from Ho Chi Minh’s revolutionary ideas and gain a great political perspective of the conflicts arising in Vietnam during the war. His autobiography shows the readers the perspective of the average Vietnamese citizen (especially those involved with the NLF) and the attitudes towards war with the United States. In the book, Truong exclaims that although many people may say the Americans never lost on the battlefield in Vietnam — it is irrelevant.
Readers, especially those reading historical fiction, always crave to find believable stories and realistic characters. Tim O’Brien gives them this in “The Things They Carried.” Like war, people and their stories are often complex. This novel is a collection stories that include these complex characters and their in depth stories, both of which are essential when telling stories of the Vietnam War. Using techniques common to postmodern writers, literary techniques, and a collection of emotional truths, O’Brien helps readers understand a wide perspective from the war, which ultimately makes the fictional stories he tells more believable.
“The Sacred Willow” portrays four generations of a Vietnamese family that stretches from the traditional mandarin culture of northern Vietnam, the French occupation, the Vietnamese war, to life in the US. A main portion of this book is centered around the narrator Mai’s father Duong Thieu Chi and his struggle of working in the government while raising a family during the time of French Occupation. Throughout Mai’s accounts, her father’s internal conflict between good and bad as well as modern and traditional are highlighted to symbolize the 20th century Vietnamese sentiments towards their country and their call for independence. The books begins by Mai retelling her great grandfather and grandfathers’ lives which are important because it gives reasoning to explain how the French occupation drastically changed her father, Duong Thieu Chi’s life, career, and decisions.
Regret is a powerful emotion that has the ability to scar someone for the rest of their life. Moments of regret can come from relationships, self-made decisions and life changing events. The idea of regret also applies to “A Marker on the Side of the Boat” by Bao Ninh and “On the Rainy River” by Tim O’Brien. Although these two literary pieces are very different in many ways, both authors describe the experience of the Vietnam War as a time of regretful decisions that negatively impacted people of both the American side and the Vietnamese side. Both authors tell a story about a character that recalls of flashbacks of the war, where they grieve over the past decisions that have affected them for the rest of their life.
How it was shaped: Tim allowed the draft of the Vietnam war and societal pressures get to the best of him and he slowly tore himself apart, he started off as a confident incorrigible man. His morals later then became corrupted, he gave into the pressures, his self proclaimed Lone Ranger status had been infected and debunked by his end decision of serving in the Vietnam war. Thesis: In the story, On the Rainy River, the author, Tim O’Brien demonstrates that an individual allows societal pressures and expectations to override their core values, morals, and beliefs; peer pressure forces individuals to put their beliefs aside so they can fit in with everyone else. The narrator, Tim O’Brien faces a similar situation when he get’s drafted for the Vietnam War.
By evaluating the fish’s importance in the story, it showed a clear representation of the Malay culture’s struggle for survival. The actions of the father acted as a doctor trying to save and revive the culture, despite
On November 1st, 1955, a country divided into two, North and South Vietnam will soon have a war known to many countries around the world. The Vietnam War, or the Second Indochina War occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. At the time, Vietnam had a dispute on what the country should be, Communistic or Republic, which had led war breaking out. North as the Viet Cong group while the Republic Of Vietnam group was South; eventually unexpected events started to unfold, leading towards the end of the war. To this very day, The Vietnam War has changed the ways how many civilians live their lives, especially my family.
In his memoir, Where the Wind Leads, Vinh Chung demonstrates the theme that times of despair and hardship will eventually pass, but it is the motivation to succeed which will make that time fruitful. While relaying the story of his family’s past, Chung gives an overall theme of success and prosperity which accompanies the distress and conflict brought about by the encompassing Vietnam War. As Chung stated, “[W]hat I do know is that the same pressure that can crush coal into dust can also turn carbon into diamond . . . Tough times produce tough people” (14). Though this theme of success can be grounded in one’s desire to prosper, Chung shows a deeper desire from which this success stems.
The Vietnam War is going on in the background of the novel and affects a character called Jeffrey. Jeffrey is a young Vietnamese boy. His family is not welcome in the small town of Corrigan and are abused and bullied. In the novel Jeffrey’s mother gets hot water spilt on her because the ladies husband died in the
She faces racism, discrimination, loneliness, and, over time, a growing sense of love for her new home. Ha’s life is turned “inside out and back again”. Before Ha had to flee Saigon, she was headstrong and selfish, but she was also a girl who loved her mother and couldn't wait to grow up. She wanted to be able to do something before her older brothers did it, and do it better. But most of all, Ha wanted to fit in, to be liked.
A statement from the novel with respect to this is; "Jeffery 's parents are Vietnamese, so
The message Thanhha Lai is trying to convey in the poem “Saigon is gone” is that the event was chaotic causing the people to fearful and distressed. For example, when Ha and her family are on the ship taking them to America a helicopter flies above. Ha describes, “People run and scream, communists!” (68) The author used specific actions to infer the people were scrambling in distress, because they’re fearful their lives will soon end.
“Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” Nam Le’s “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice” is categorized in “ethnic story” narrated his Vietnamese life in order to meet an upcoming deadline even though finally he can’t submit his story because his father burns his work. Throughout the story, Nam the narrator talks about “the past” which he experiences when he was young including the recent experience that he has got from his father reunion. Not only does the story tell us about the past which, but it also shows a connection of time between past, present, and future. Likewise, the story shows the relationship between son and father which is the main theme of this story; and shows how the past is important and affect to them differently. Also, the story of the past could lead to the end of the story that can be interpreted like a prediction of the direction of their relationship in the future.
To begin with, both Tan and Crutcher utilize characterization to pursue the shared theme, that a strong sense of self is crucial when under the pressure of the expectation of others. In “Fish Cheeks” by Amy Tan, Amy feels propelled to conform because she feels judged for not being “normal”. Tan states, “What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas” (2). Also, it’s obvious Amy was self-conscious about the Chinese style of cooking and in this sentence she’s self-conscious because she says, “For Christmas I prayed for this blond-haired boy, and a slim new American nose”(1). In the first quote, she was over thinking and doubting that Robert would not like “our shabby Chinese Christmas” though in the end she was correct about Robert
Nhat Hanh also saw that people were having a difficult time which government had paid little effort to take care of public lives and welfare during the Vietnam War. He founded that there was a necessity to