Catfish and Mandala
(eBook)

Grouping Information

Hoopla Extract Information

stdClass Object
(
    [year] => 2010
    [artist] => Andrew X. Pham
    [fiction] => 
    [coverImageUrl] => https://cover.hoopladigital.com/opr_9781429979924_270.jpeg
    [titleId] => 16763352
    [isbn] => 9781429979924
    [abridged] => 
    [language] => ENGLISH
    [profanity] => 
    [title] => Catfish and Mandala
    [demo] => 
    [segments] => Array
        (
        )

    [pages] => 354
    [children] => 
    [artists] => Array
        (
            [0] => stdClass Object
                (
                    [name] => Andrew X. Pham
                    [artistFormal] => Pham, Andrew X.
                    [relationship] => AUTHOR
                )

        )

    [genres] => Array
        (
            [0] => Asia
            [1] => Asian & Asian American
            [2] => Biography & Autobiography
            [3] => Cultural, Ethnic & Regional
            [4] => History
            [5] => Southeast
            [6] => Southeast Asia
            [7] => Travel
        )

    [price] => 2.35
    [id] => 16763352
    [edited] => 
    [kind] => EBOOK
    [active] => 1
    [upc] => 
    [synopsis] => Winner of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Winner of the Whiting Writers' Award

A Seattle Post-Intelligencer Best Book of the Year

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.
    [url] => https://www.hoopladigital.com/title/16763352
    [pa] => 
    [publisher] => Farrar, Straus and Giroux
    [purchaseModel] => INSTANT
)