Perfume Dreams

"e;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."e; -Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize-winning authorA PEN American Beyond Margins Award winnerIn 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."e;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."e; -Los Angeles Times Book Review"e;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."e; -Maxine Hong Kingston, national bestselling author of The Woman Warrior"e;Lam's insights into Asian American life are reflected in candid, witty anecdotes that reveal much about the difficulties of living in two cultures."e; -Audrey Magazine