Giving Way

There’s an old Vietnamese proverb that “A day of traveling will bring a basketful of learning.” There is meaning to exploring one’s communities to figure out identity and learn about culture through personal journeys and memoir writing. This proverb held true during Andrew X. Pham’s journey through Vietnam on a bicycle in his memoir, Catfish and Mandala, as he sought to learn more about his family’s culture and himself. Similarly, Richard Rodriguez’ “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood,” and Monique Troung’s “Southern, Reborn,” address the intertwining of identity and culture as people journey to find their sense of place and to belong within their communities. For Rodriguez, the journey took him to a new school and a new American culture. For Troung, she finds her rebirth through her experiences living in the South as she grew to love the culture and food. These texts ultimately explore how it is only in the “giving way” or “giving up” of preconceived notions about a culture that an individual will finally learn the natural variables and metamorphosis of identity and belonging.

In many ways, the memoir by Andrew X. Pham, Catfish and Mandala, details Pham’s journey as a Vietnamese American who must find a way to relinquish his preconceived ideas about both his Vietnamese and new American heritage to find a sense of belonging in his cultural middle ground. Pham’s challenging experiences show his efforts to find identity within his own Vietnamese culture through relationships and activities, along with engagement with people and language. Pham’s own world growing up left him without a sense of security that leads to the identity he so desired, and that is what makes the genre of the memoir more powerful. The readers journey with Pham as he left his homeland in an open boat after a devastating war, and after a series of other mishaps and difficult trials, Pham finds himself in a rough neighborhood, unable to make peace with his personal story, especially after the suicide of his sister. Even Pham’s Vietnam journey seems wrecked by similar obstacles and turns that are a “continuous charade of posturing, bluffing, fast moves,” much like Saigon’s traffic he experiences (75). Pham points out that with the traffic, “nobody gives way to anybody” (75). Yet, unknown to Pham, it is the symbolism of the traffic that is the very direction and “giving way” that is key to his story. Pham looks for answers for his identity by comparing his American culture to his Vietnamese culture, but Pham must realize that he is neither strictly Vietnamese nor strictly American. He must find his sense of identity through giving way to what he expects in order to find his sense of belonging.

People have a connection with the places they live and experience that is detailed through the journey of memoir writing, and this is seen not only in Pham’s Catfish and Mandala but also in Richard Rodriguez’ “Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood” and Monique Troung’s “Southern, Reborn.” Rodriguez opens his memoir, “Aria,” about his bilingual childhood sharing about how the nun at the Catholic school introduces him to the class and says, “Boys and girls, this is Richard Rodriguez” (Shea 303). In one quick introduction, the critical piece of his identity story begins: who is Richard Rodriguez? Not surprisingly, Rodriguez experiences a white, English speaking world of his Catholic school that contrasts with his Mexican, Spanish-speaking culture at home. It is a wrestling between the “private life” versus his “public gain” after Americanization (313). Rodriguez finds his identity between the tension of his parents’ Spanish language and his school’s culture and his own American citizenship. Rodriguez finds that by letting go of his “private individuality” and culture, he gained his “public individuality” and assimilation through the journey of release, identity, and sense of belonging (312). His was not a journey of comfort or ease to find this balance. Like Pham’s discovery in Catfish and Mandala, Rodriguez follows his life’s chronicling change to embrace his new Americanization.

Monique Troung’s memoir piece, “Southern, Reborn,” also highlights the adaptability that multiple culture kids must find to blend into their community. Memoir writers grow as they write to come to terms with their identities. Even Troung finds that, despite being a Vietnamese refugee who was “reborn in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in 1975,” her identity can still be put into question. She proudly remembers her quick adaptability and that “within two years…[she] was a baton twirler, one of the quintessential rites of passage of Southern girlhood.” Yet, much later as a published author, her editors seek to minimize her “southerness” for her memoir’s cover art — as if a Vietnamese American woman couldn’t also identify as Southern. Just as Pham and Rodriguez discovered, Troung finds herself in the constant shifting of details, reflection, and identity where there is a greater challenge to voice the sense of belonging (or lack thereof) that one has found.

There is no doubt that children of immigrants in the United States face new challenges to find a sense of identity and belonging. These memoirs emphasize the importance of flexibility and letting go that is needed to find one’s identity amid multiple perspectives and cultures that are equally foreign from one another. Relinquishment drives a growing consciousness of previous assumptions about one’s culture, family, and sense of belonging. Ultimately, the experience of memories and identity for their memoirs become influenced by the people surrounding the writers, along with the culture and homeland of his parents and ancestors.

Works Cited

Pham, Andrew X. Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and

Memory of Vietnam. New York: Picador Press, 1999.

Shea, Renee, Lawrence Scanlan, and Robin Dissin Aufses. Language of Composition: Reading,

Writing, Rhetoric. Boston: St. Martin’s Press, 2013.

Troung, Monique. “Southern, Reborn.” (Gravy, Spring 2016).

Sunset Photo Credit: Eliott Reyna

Keys Photo Credit: Samantha Lam