East Eats West: The Multi-Centered Reality
East Eats West: The Multi-Centered Reality

Summary/Abstract: “As someone who straddles both sides of the Pacific, my ambition is to describe the marriage of East and West, their growing interdependence and, in the footsteps of V.S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie and Edward Said, convey a world of human flux and shifting borders and, ultimately, redraw the map of America, one based on a trans-Pacific sensibility”. This is how Vietnamese-American writer and journalist Andrew Lam introduced himself and his intentions in the 2004 PBS documentary My Journey Home. His 2010 volume East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres sets itself to fulfill the author’s declared goals. It is a complex, intriguing, informative and touching collection of essays, which retraces Lam’s experience as a constant traveler between worlds and languages. The mechanisms of cultural definition and negotiation are sharply and wittily captured, as the writer illustrates his and his family’s gradual integration into the ‘global tribe’. Where hemispheres overlap, there are uncharted territories to explore. Lam’s personal and professional discoveries reveal the potential of contact zones and offer insightful perspectives upon (im)migration and cultural identity.

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