“Catfish and Mandala” written by Andrew X. Pham is a famous autobiographical story about Andrew’s searches for his place under the sun. It is Pham’s memoir of the Vietnam War and its influence on his life. This novel is a panorama of late-twentieth-century Vietnam, a divided country that is suffering from the unrecoverable consequences of the war and languishing in poverty, trying to survive with the help of tourism and agriculture. Andrew’s life is also crumbled in search of his home.
As far as, this book presents Andrew’s recollections and some fragments from his memory, the style of narration is notable for repetitions and interruptions. The novel is full of contradictions, binaries, and anomalies. Binaries and contradictions acquire great power in this novel. They are the carriers of the main idea.
The most interesting in Pham’s narration is the use of hyphens in each chapter; this unusual literary pattern is used for a wide range of reasons. This method helps Pham to compare polarized and contradictory words. Hyphenation used in “Catfish and Mandala” is valid for expressing the main idea of the book.
Each hyphenated title of the chapter carries a depth of the story within itself expressing a great sense of meaning in Pham’s journey. For example, the title of the chapter ‘Fallen-Leaves’ presents the story and the time of the chapter: “A missed sitting on his father’s lap for stories-a memory of beer breaths of which great voyages sailed” (Pham 212). Such kinds of titles carry a dual sense. This hyphenated title expresses Pham’s lost childhood and his attempts to find his home, being an adult man he feels like a fallen leave.
The chapter under the title ‘Foreign-Asians ‘expresses the duality of Pham’s life. He is Asian himself and Vietnamese in particular, but he is treated as a foreigner in his native land. In this hyphenated expression, the word ‘foreign’ has more power than the word ‘Asians’ and stands out before the reader carries the main idea. Pham exists in America and Vietnam with a “hyphenated identity”. He is both Vietnamese and American and at the same time, he is neither this nor that. This hyphenated expression depicts his uneasy position between two places, two lives, and two or even more minds. It is expressed in the following words: “Forgive me. Let me digress. It’s much less interesting to read someone who’s trying to resolve that problem. The problem is interesting enough. This is something I’m trying to understand how to articulate. This is something I’m trying to avoid doing in my writing. It’s not that I distrust epiphanies (though I do, at least mine: they’re always temporary; they never stick.) But the resolution in a memoir is ultimately idiosyncratic. For some it’s food, for others it’s therapy, for some it’s God, and so on, but it’s not reproducible. It’s private” (Pham 334).
Another binary that plays an important role in the novel is the binary of the present and the past. The past always penetrates the present, it infringes on the present. Vietnamese can’t live fully in the present without their memories of the past. The war always leaves an indelible stamp that is impossible to forget. Pham cannot forget his background. He tries to find himself looking into his past. People carry the past with themselves into their future. Especially it concerns immigrants who move from one place to another looking for their place on this Earth.
‘Chi-Minh’ is another interesting hyphenated title with an emphasis on Chi. Pham describes Chi as he remembers her. This new Minh is less familiar to him. He only knows that this new Minh is a woman who is remembered as his sister Chi: And now, with Minh gone from us, my greatest regret is our failure to make sense of those missing years. While he was with us, he left his personal history dormant, boxed in this new shell, this new being we didn’t comprehend… The vague sketch of Minh’s life I gleaned during my brief time with him seems trivial, more a testament to my stony core than anything attributable to him. (Pham 293)
Pham also uses contradictory hyphenations which demonstrate the struggle between two worlds. The chapter ‘Baptizing-Buddha’ presents the history of Pham’s family as they attempt to connect these two contradictory notions in their life. The mother wants to stick to her traditional roots while the father is more inclined to the Christian church. The peak of this conflict is especially protruded when the mother adds traditional Vietnamese seasoning to the Christmas turkey (Pham 166). The two cultures and religions conflict in their life, Christianity and Buddhism.
There are also interesting patterns of multiple worded hyphenations which also demonstrate the conflicts inside the main characters, the struggling contradictory notions: “Son is a womanizer, a photographer, a pimp, a Taoist, a poet, a Buddhist, a drunk, a Catholic, a polygamist, a philosopher-a dreamer” (Pham 86).
Pham’s hyphens are a significant point in his narration. These hyphenated notions describing people, places, and events express the idea of the contradiction of the whole world. This interesting method is used to give the novel the edge. These struggling notions help the readers to look inside themselves and to find their place in this life. Pham finds himself through the different hyphenations and binaries and makes the reader closer to understanding themselves. These methods express Andrew Pham’s talent and literary workmanship. Reading his poem, we plunge into his inner life with its contradictions, binaries, and anomalies which are skillfully depicted in his novel. Such contradictions are peculiar to every human being with the past, who looks for the place in the world in the present and hopes for a better future.
Works Cited
Pham, A. X. Catfish and Mandala. USA: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999.