Writer to Discuss His Astonishing "Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam" at UB Oct. 11

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Thirty-one year-old journalist Andrew X. Pham left Vietnam as a child in a leaky boat and returned 20 years later to travel by bicycle through the land of his birth. The excursion led to fascinating revelations about his family's past, its secrets and wounds, and finally drew him into his own psyche.

The result is "Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam." In the book Pham offers a provocative and lyrical account his travels and his struggle to reconcile ideals with which he was imbued as a child in Vietnam with those he acquired in America.

The University at Buffalo will host Pham for a lectures and reading on Oct. 11 at 7:30 p.m. in the Screening Room of the Center for the Arts, North (Amherst) Campus. The event is free of charge and open to the public.

Critic Lisa See calls Pham's book a marriage of family memoir, personal recollection, descriptive travelogue and adventure mystery. It won the 1999 Kiriyama Book Prize for nonfiction and resulted in much critical acclaim for Pham, who has been heralded as a "fresh new voice" in literature.

Pham's visit to UB will be sponsored by the UB Asian Interest Sorority; World Language Institute; James H. McNulty Chair (Dennis Tedlock), Poetics Program; Asian Studies Program; College of Arts and Sciences, and by the U.S.-Indochina Educational Foundation.

For more information, contact the World Languages Institute at 645-2292 or via email at ub-wli@acsu.buffalo.edu.