![]() ![]() ![]() Flipping between the two story lines, Pham elucidates his main dilemma: he's an outsider in both America and Vietnam-in the former for being Vietnamese, and the latter for being Viet-kieu. Uncertain if his trip is a ""pilgrimage or a farce,"" Pham pedals his bike the length of his native country, all the while confronting the guilt he feels as a successful Viet-kieu (Vietnamese expatriate) and as a survivor of his older sister Chai, whose isolation in America and eventual suicide he did little to prevent. The second recounts his return to Vietnam almost two decades later as an Americanized but culturally confused young man. as an adolescent in 1977 and his family's subsequent and somewhat troubled life in California. The first, which begins in war-torn Vietnam, chronicles the author's hair-raising escape to the U.S. In narrating his search for his roots, Vietnamese-American and first-time author Pham alternates between two story lines. ![]()
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