The collection is a labor of love and devotion, and whenever I found free time from my journalism work, I'd work on one story or another, or at least sketch out my characters, and research various issues related to my characters' dilemmas.
Andrew LamI think in a larger sense, immigrant narrative is comprehensive and speaks to the core of human experience.
Andrew LamAmerica's story is largely an immigrant story. That hasn't changed since the Pilgrims ate their first turkey some four hundred years ago, and they were the original boat people.
Andrew LamPrecious things lost are transmutable. They refuse oblivion. They simply wait to be rendered into testimonies, into stories and songs.
Andrew LamThough I later found a career as a journalist and an essayist, fiction is my first love and I never left it, even though there was no easy way to make a living from it.
Andrew LamAll three of my books, "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora," "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres," and "Birds of Paradise Lost," are immigrant narratives - their dreams, their traumas, their struggles - and I write them with the confidence that these stories, written from the heart, will belong, in time, to America.
Andrew Lam