Andrew Pham

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Andrew Pham

• Qing Wang
• Fatima Nguyen
• Robert Wood
• He Zhu
• Joe Lui
• Hui She

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Biography of Andrew X. Pham

• Childhood
• -He was born in Phan Thiet.
• -He spent his younger years in the Red River
  Delta.
• -He grew up in a rich family before the war.
• -The childhood dream of the author was to
  return to Vietnam to attend Saigon University.

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Family Background

• Andrews father worked double shifts as a school
  teacher. During the war between the North and the
  South, his father earned money by working for the
  Republic army in the propaganda department.
• Andrews mother did laundry for her neighbors to
  earn extra money to support their struggling
  household.
• 6 children Chi, Andrew, Huy, Tien, Hieu, and Kay
  (last child born in Louisiana)

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Educational Background

• Attended UCLA for aerospace engineering (1990)
• Graduated from UCLA in Aeronautical Engineering
  but wanted to be a writer
• He decided to take creative writing courses at De
  Anza College. He consider this time his wondrous
  years

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Refugee Status

• After sneaking out of Vietnam through Malaysia,
  Andrew, his mother and father, his aunt Dung, his
  older sister Chi, and his three younger brothers
  Huy, Tien, and Hien took a fishing boat that
  later fell apart and were rescued by an
  Indonesian freighter ship to escape out of
  Vietnam.
• The family stayed in Jakarta, a refugee facility
  in Indonesia, for 18 months
• Then The First Baptist Church of Shreveport in
  Louisiana helped the family with airfare, finding
  his dad a job, and finding a place to stay.

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A two-wheeled voyage to find his identity.
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Life in America

• In 1991, Andrew published a book named Catfish
  and Mandala
• This book is about his journal in Viet Nam,
  where he was born.
• His purpose was finding his identity and roots.
  Because he is a Vietnamese American, it was
  difficult for him to identify himself. He
  described himself as a person with a lost soul.
• In order to find his soul, he decided to
  travel.

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Travel to Identity

• Andrew arrived in Hanoi, the city of his fathers
  origins.
• During the Voyage, he tried to rethink his
  identity
• At last, he realized that finding his true
  identity was more difficult than he imagine it to
  be.
• He started his journey to find his roots,
  his essence, but instead Andrew Pham learned
  something else entirely His travels carved into
  him experiences and memories that altered his
  outlook on life, as living is prone to do.
• Therefore his voyage to explore himself will go
  on and his value will change as time goes by

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Travel to Identity Cont

• Andrew returned home in Saigon, and realized that
  he forgot a lot of things. He started to collect
  memories of where his father stayed, because
  everything had changed. He felt he couldnt find
  his roots anymore. People in Vietnam didnt
  really like him because he was a Vietnamese
  American. He realized the place he came from was
  not the same from what he could remember when he
  was a child.
• Andrew visited his birth place, however it did
  not help him find his identity. Finally he
  realized searching for the past is painful and
  decided it was time to stop his search.

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Work Cited

• http//www.andrewxpham.com/
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_X._Pham

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The End