Themes and Issues of Perfume Dreams
Many are reluctant at first to pick up a biography or memior wondering "How could this person's life relate to mine?" These fears are present even more when the author comes from a very different cultural background than the reader. Andrew Lam's Memoir Perfume Dreams could give someone similar fears, as it is centered around the Vietnamese Diaspora, something of which many students have little knowledge and to which they have no direct connection. Reading through the essays, however, it is seen that while Andrew Lam has gone through something most of us never have and hopefully never will, the themes he discusses are present in each of our lives, in different ways. Three central themes Lam discusses that we, as readers, can relate to, include the notion of "home", "language" and "struggle" and are discussed in the short essays, below.
Theme:
