This series was written and reported by Anh Do and Teri Sforza. We admired the masterful blend of emotional material—the boy’s and his family’s experience of separation, loss—with engaging explications of Buddhist traditions and belief. The piece also rightly emphasizes the social contexts that make Don Pham’s story so remarkable.
Much of the reporting is sensual and vivid, as if the reporters had experienced the scenes first-hand. At other times the writing, while still engaging, seems to be reconstruction. We wondered about the reporting process and would have appreciated endnotes or some other unobtrusive form of sourcing.
Read “The Boy Monk,” by Anh Do and Teri Sforza