Post Tiananmen: China's Body Image Shifts From Cultural to Sexual Revolution

New America Media, Andrew Lam Jun 03, 2013

There came a startling moment when everything shifted. A man carrying two plastic bags, one in each hand, stood directly in the path of a column of armored tanks, effectively preventing them from proceeding down the avenue toward Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

Andrew Lam on War, Peace, Vietnam and America

New America Media, Speech, Andrew Lam May 31, 2013

Andrew Lam is an editor with New America Media and the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora and East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres. His latest book, Birds of Paradise Lost, a collection of short stories about Vietnamese refugees struggling to rebuild their lives in California, was published March, 2013. He spoke at the Vietnam War Symposium at Eau Clair in Wisconsin last year.

Who Will Light Incense When Mother's Gone?

New America Media, Essay, Andrew Lam May 11, 2013

My mother suffers from dementia and forgetfulness now, and is growing frail, but her ways remain forever devoted to traditions, to distant memories, to ancestors worshipping and family.

Andrew Lam's Birds of Paradise Lost: Immigrants Experience and Literature

WBAI, Andrew Lam May 01, 2013

A widow whose husband’s killer becomes a customer in her restaurant, a man who discovers he can dial his old house in Vietnam simply by picking up the phone, and a father raising his young daughter alone in a California housing project after his wife dies on the boat crossing. The characters in Andrew Lam’s new book of short stories, Birds of Paradise Lost (Red Hen Press), may have left Vietnam behind, but they are unable to escape the trauma that accompanied their departure. APF’s Leyla Mei sat down with the author to talk about nostalgia and memory, hatred and forgiveness, and sadness and loss. Andrew Lam is a journalist and writer. He is an editor and cofounder of New American Media and blogs regularly at Huffington Post. His book Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora won the 2006 PEN Open Book Award.

Mẹ Việt Nam ơi chúng con vẫn còn đây.

Cairo Review, Andrew Lam Apr 28, 2013

Lời bài hát đầy tình cảm này thỉnh thoảng trở về trong tôi, đặc biệt là khi tôi nghĩ về Cộng đồng Việt Nam hải ngoại và mối quan hệ phức tạp của họ với quê nhà.

What's in A Name? A Vietnamese Immigrant's Perspective

New America Media, Commentary, Andrew Lam Apr 16, 2013

Many immigrants change names when they come to the US but some don't. Andrew Lam thinks it's a good mental challenge to keep many names and manage them.

Andrew Lam's Birds of Paradise Lost: Immigrants Experience and Literature

ChicoSol, Review, Lindajoy Fenley Apr 09, 2013

Sometimes I wondered what was ahead for Lam's Vietnamese immigrants. More frequently, I was intrigued by their past, though I rarely knew which direction to look. Skillfully, the author led me to an understanding of his complex characters by slowly revealing their secret struggles and histories. In each story, he foreshadows the conclusion by peeling back history in carefully measured bits.

Andrew Lam: Language, Memory, Bliss

New America Media, Q&A, Karin Davidson Apr 08, 2013

Andrew Lam at San Jose State University March 20, @noon to introduce 'Birds of Paradise Lost'

New America Media, Reading from book, Birds of Paradise Lost, Andrew Lam Mar 12, 2013

The thirteen stories in Birds of Paradise Lost shimmer with humor and pathos as they chronicle the anguish and joy and bravery of America’s newest Americans, the troubled lives of those who fled Vietnam and remade themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area. The past—memories of war and its aftermath, of murder, arrest, re-education camps and new economic zones, of escape and shipwreck and atrocity—is ever present in these wise and compassionate stories. It plays itself out in surprising ways in the lives of people who thought they had moved beyond the nightmares of war and exodus. It comes back on TV in the form of a confession from a cannibal; it enters the Vietnamese restaurant as a Vietnam Vet with a shameful secret; it articulates itself in the peculiar tics of a man with Tourette’s Syndrome who struggles to deal with a profound tragedy. Birds of Paradise Lost is an emotional tour de force, intricately rendering the false starts and revelations in the struggle for integration, and in so doing, the human heart.