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

Chi is Pham’s sister, older by about four years, who in many ways protected and guided him early in life. Of all Pham’s siblings, Chi stands out for the central role she played in his family. Chi’s life was long troubled, starting back in Vietnam when her father beat her quite severely for disobeying him. After that, she became withdrawn from the family and lived with her maternal grandmother. This aloofness continued when the family moved to the US, and in high school Chi began to assume the identity of a boy. When her father learns of this, he again beat her, leading to child abuse charges for him and causing Chi to run away.

Chi stayed away for 14 years, during which she transitioned genders, took the name Minh, and married a Vietnamese-American woman. Minh re-enters their lives after losing his job and separating from his wife, but he is on a downward spiral which he cannot pull out of. Near the holidays, he commits suicide. Pham feels guilty for not being closer to Minh during that time, for not getting to know him deeply. He also harbors guilt for being the one to tell his father long ago that Chi had disobeyed him, which led to the severe beating that caused Chi’s initial separation from the family. 

Pham’s father, Thong, was born to an aristocratic family in northern Vietnam, near Hanoi. After the Communist takeover, they relocated to Saigon, where Thong became a teacher. When the war intensifies, Thong gets drafted into the South Vietnamese army and becomes the head of propaganda in one of the provinces. Captured at the war’s end, he spends time in a labor camp before gaining release. Still not feeling safe, Thong and his wife Anh devise a plan to escape by sea with their family. An Indonesian freighter rescues Thong and his family and gives asylum.

Eventually, Thong and his family make their way to the United States, first to Louisiana and then to California. Among other things, he works as a janitor and computer programmer, but never stops trying to better himself, and he pushes his children to do the same. One of the main traits that Pham explores about his father in the book is a violent streak, inherited from his own father and passed down to his sons. In Vietnamese culture, it is more accepted that a father shows love for his children when he beats them to instill in them a sense of right and wrong. However, in a scene near the end of the book, Thong tells Pham that he now realizes this kind of beating is abuse.