Full name: Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora

Author: Andrew Lam Year: 2005 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Non Fiction, Essays, History, Memoirs Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9781597140201 1597140201

Cultural Writing. Asian American Studies. In his long-overdue first collection of essays, noted journalist and NPR commentator Andrew Lam explores his life-long struggle for identity as a Viet Kieu, or a Vietnamese national living abroad. At age eleven, Lam, the son of a South Vietnamese general, came to California on the eve of the fall of Saigon to communist forces. He traded his Vietnamese name for a more American one and immersed himself in the allure of the American Dream: something not clearly defined for him or his family. Reflecting on the meanings of the Vietnam War to the Vietnamese people themselves--particularly to those in exile--Lam picks with searing honesty at the roots of his doubleness and his parents' longing for a homeland that no longer exists. Similar books: 1 Dead in Attic by Chris Rose Levels of Life by Julian Barnes Lulu in Hollywood by Louise Brooks The Education of a British-Protected Child by Chinua Achebe What I Saw by Joseph Roth China in Ten Words by Yu Hua No Name in the Street by James Baldwin Hermit in Paris by Italo Calvino Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong The Memory Chalet by Tony Judt Gumption by Nick Offerman Bitch by Elizabeth Wurtzel We Are Our Mothers' Daughters by Cokie Roberts Imagined London by Anna Quindlen Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates A River in Darkness by Masaji Ishikawa Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand Lady in Waiting by Anne Glenconner Upstairs at the White House by J. B. West Escape from Camp 14 by Blaine Harden