Perfume Dreams

Book excerpt: “Much will be made—and rightly so—of the eloquent commentary [Lam’s] essays provide on Vietnam and the Vietnamese . . . a fascinating and important book.” —Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize–winning author A PEN American Beyond Margins Award winner In his long-overdue first collection of essays, noted journalist and NPR commentator Andrew Lam explores his lifelong 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. “Lam shatters the assumptions of readers who have encountered the Vietnam experience only through American pop culture . . . He writes with the delicacy and intensity of a poet.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review “Andrew Lam writes with the honesty of a true journalist and the feeling of a born storyteller. On his many journeys between Vietnam and the U.S., he sees first-hand the global consequences of war. Perfume Dreams is a meaningful book for our times.” —Maxine Hong Kingston, national bestselling author of The Woman Warrior “Lam’s insights into Asian American life are reflected in candid, witty anecdotes that reveal much about the difficulties of living in two cultures.” —Audrey Magazine