I see the setting sun grinding down on the ancient treetops and the prickly antennas atop the shouldering buildings. It glowers, a fist of coal in a sea of smog thick as dishwater. In the glimmering heat, the narrow roads swarm with headlights of motorbikes, bright beams wildly fingering the asphalt arteries, companions of the horns, the screeching, badgering, warring horns, persistent always. The air throbs, salty, wet with exhaust, dank with perspiration. Worlds Apart Much of Catfish talks of the difficult bridge from being Vietnamese to being American.
Relatives engage in a rock fight when the old tradition of respect for elder brothers breaks down.
Pham's father disciplines Pham's older sister, Chi, in the way he has been taught, caning her unmercifully. But a schoolteacher observes Chi's bruises and calls authorities, and the father is arrested. The book is partially dedicated to Chi, whose suicide propelled Pham into returning to his native country to determine the source of her discontent and to untangle his family's angst. Talking in between preparations for the obligatory author's bookstore tour, Pham says he sees a Vietnamese people in deep transition, both in Vietnam and here in America, twisting back, snakelike, almost in direct contradiction of themselves and their traditions. That is often masked, he explains, by the fact that the anti-Communist minority is so forceful that it often sweeps up the rest of the community with it.