Andrew Lam (born 1964) is a

Vietnamese American Vietnamese Americans ( vi, Người Mỹ gốc Việt, lit=Viet-origin American people) are Americans of Vietnamese ancestry. They make up about half of all overseas Vietnamese and are the fourth-largest Asian American ethnic group after Chinese ...

author and journalist who has written about the

Overseas Vietnamese Overseas Vietnamese ( vi, người Việt hải ngoại, or ) refers to Vietnamese people who live outside Vietnam. There are approximately 5 million overseas Vietnamese, the largest community of whom live in the Vietnamese Americans, Unite ...

experience.

Biography

Andrew Lam was born Lâm Quang Dũng in 1964 in

South Vietnam South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam ( vi, Việt Nam Cộng hòa), was a state in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of th ...

. He led a privileged life as the son of General Lâm Quang Thi of the

Army of the Republic of Vietnam The Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN; ; french: Armée de la république du Viêt Nam) composed the ground forces of the Republic of Vietnam Military Forces, South Vietnamese military from its inception in 1955 to the Fall of Saigon in April ...

. He attended

Lycée Yersin The Lycée Yersin was a school founded in 1927 in Da Lat, Vietnam, to educate the children of French colonialists and upper class Vietnamese. After various changes, it is now the Pedagogical College of Da Lat (Vietnamese: Trường Cao đẳng S� ...

Đà Lạt Da Lat (also written as Dalat, vi, Đà Lạt; ), is the capital of Lâm Đồng Province and the largest city of the Central Highlands region in Vietnam. The city is located above sea level on the Langbian Plateau. Da Lat is one of the mos ...

. Lam left Vietnam with his family during the

fall of Saigon The Fall of Saigon, also known as the Liberation of Saigon by North Vietnamese or Liberation of the South by the Vietnamese government, and known as Black April by anti-communist overseas Vietnamese was the capture of Saigon, the capital of ...

in April 1975. He attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

where he majored in biochemistry. He soon abandoned plans for medical school and entered a creative writing program at

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

. While still in school he began writing for

Pacific News Service Pacific News Service (PNS) was an American nonprofit alternative news media organization. PNS ceased operations in 2017. The organization was located in Berkeley, California, Berkeley, California. History PNS was founded in 1969 by historian ...

and in 1993 won the Outstanding Young Journalist Award from the

Society of Professional Journalists The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is the oldest organization representing journalists in the United States. It was established on April 17, 1909, at DePauw University,2009 SPJ Annual Report, letter ...

. A

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

documentary produced by WETA in 2004, ''My Journey Home'', told 3 stories of Americans returning to their ancestral homelands, including of Lam's return to Vietnam. He is currently the web editor of New America Media. He is also a journalist and short story writer. In 2005, he published a collection of essays, ''Perfume Dreams'', about the problem of identity as a Vietnamese living in the U.S. Lam received the

PEN/Beyond Margins Award PEN/Open Book (known as the Beyond Margins Award through 2009) is a program intended to foster racial and ethnic diversity within the literary and publishing communities, and works to establish access for diverse literary groups to the publishing i ...

in 2006 for ''Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora.'' He is a regular contributor to National Public Radio's ''All Things Considered''. His second book, ''East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres'' is a meditation on east–west relations, and how Asian immigration changed the West. It was named Top Ten Indies by Shelf Unbound Magazine in 2010. ''Birds of Paradise Lost'', his third book, is a collection of short stories about Vietnamese newcomers struggling to remake their lives in the San Francisco Bay after a long, painful exodus from Vietnam. Lam blogs regularly on

Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

. He was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University 2001–2002. Though reticent about speaking about his sexuality, in 2009 Lam gave an interview for a collection of portraits of homosexual Americans.Gambone, 194-9

Publications

Books
"Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora", (Heyday Books, 2005)"East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres," (Heyday Books, 2010)"Birds of Paradise Lost," (Red Hen Press, 2013)
Essays
"Letter to a Vietnamese cousin: Should you come to America?", December 22, 2002"Andrew Lam's essays on New America Media""Andrew Lam's essays on Huffington Post"
Fiction *"Slingshot" in ''

Zyzzyva ''Zyzzyva'' is a triannual magazine of writers and artists. It places an emphasis on showcasing emerging voices and never before published writers in addition to the already established. Based in San Francisco, it began publishing in 1985. ''ZYZZY ...

'', winter 1998
available online
Short Stories "Show and Tell"

Quotes

* "Art is the lesser sister to medicine. It aims to heal."

Notes

External links

a short story
Andrew Lam page
on Alternet

on WQED
"Cõi già trên đất lạ,"
a translation by Nguyễn Đức Nguyên of Andrew Lam's "Aging in a Foreign Land," printed here with original English version {{DEFAULTSORT:Lam, Andrew 1964 births Living people 21st-century American businesspeople American short story writers American gay writers Vietnamese emigrants to the United States University of California, Berkeley alumni Vietnamese writers American writers of Vietnamese descent American male journalists American male short story writers LGBT American people of Asian descent PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award winners American male non-fiction writers LGBT people from Vietnam English-language literature of Vietnam 21st-century LGBT people