Call number
FIC CAN
Collection
Genres
Publication
Viking Adult (1997), 260 pages
Description
Like nagivating a monkey bridge - a bridge built of spindly bamboo, used by peasants for centuries - Lan Cao's narrative traverses perilously between worlds past and present, east and West, intelling two interlocked stories. One of these stories is the Vietnamese version of the classic immigrant experience in America, told by a young girl; and the second, a dark tale of betrayal, political intrigue, family secrets, and revenge - her mother's tale. The haunting and beautiful terrain of Monkey Bridgeis the 'luminous motion' as it is called in Vietnamese myth and legend, between generations, encompassing Vietnamese lore, history, and dreams of the past as well as the future.
User reviews
LibraryThing member teaperson
An interesting novel (semi-autobiographical?) tracing a young woman's trying to understand her own life, and especially her mother's, after the end of the Vietnam War brings them to America. The revelation of the truth at the end is a bit wooden. There's also a lot of explanation of the background
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color, which doesn't necessarily help the plot along, but does add to the interest of the book. Show Less
LibraryThing member narwhaltortellini
This is the story of Mai, who immigrates to America after the war, and her mother who follows some time after. Mai, being younger, takes on the American language and culture more completely than her mother, who in Vietnam seemed a stronger, more capable and intelligent woman, but in America seems
After a stroke, Mai's mother's mental state seems to deteriorate further, and Mai hears her calling for Baba Quan, her mother's father who was left behind in Vietnam. This causes Mai to begin a search for a way to bring Baba Quan to America so that he may ease her mother's heart and allow Mai to leave home for college. The story explores the past and relationship of the two, the trauma they suffered in Vietnam, the clash between Mai's world of American schooling and science and her mother's of curses and karma, and their desire to care for one another and yet their need to push the other away.
I pretty much read this book twice for school. The first time I had a more favorable impression, but I think that may have stemmed from having a Vietnamese mother myself and some things in it being amusingly familiar. The second time through, it seemed a more average read. Also, the book's conclusion, though I predicted it very early on, felt as if it came rather out of left-field build-up wise, and was also a bit unsatisfying. As I read it the second time I think it just stressed that even more, as I was able to watch and see the build to it...or rather notice the semi-lack thereof.
Usually I'd rate a book on the first impression, but I think the second was really more representative of the actual quality of the book. It's still alright, though.
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to become foggy and troubled.After a stroke, Mai's mother's mental state seems to deteriorate further, and Mai hears her calling for Baba Quan, her mother's father who was left behind in Vietnam. This causes Mai to begin a search for a way to bring Baba Quan to America so that he may ease her mother's heart and allow Mai to leave home for college. The story explores the past and relationship of the two, the trauma they suffered in Vietnam, the clash between Mai's world of American schooling and science and her mother's of curses and karma, and their desire to care for one another and yet their need to push the other away.
I pretty much read this book twice for school. The first time I had a more favorable impression, but I think that may have stemmed from having a Vietnamese mother myself and some things in it being amusingly familiar. The second time through, it seemed a more average read. Also, the book's conclusion, though I predicted it very early on, felt as if it came rather out of left-field build-up wise, and was also a bit unsatisfying. As I read it the second time I think it just stressed that even more, as I was able to watch and see the build to it...or rather notice the semi-lack thereof.
Usually I'd rate a book on the first impression, but I think the second was really more representative of the actual quality of the book. It's still alright, though.
Show Less
LibraryThing member mnlohman
Girl escapes Saigon in 1975 to be reunited with her mother in Falls Church, Virginia. Beautifully written account of old life and traditions and the immigrant experience.
LibraryThing member drbrand
It is always impressive when one can write about the effects of war without succumbing to the tendency to depict gruesome battle scenes and heroic acts of valor and sacrifice. In most of the novels I have read about the Vietnam War, soldiers are forced to commit acts of atrocity and many of the
While at first I was not drawn into the narrative of the postwar Vietnamese refugee experience, I became more interested once it appeared that the main character’s mother was attempting to recreate her past and establish a new identity for herself. By the end of the novel, I felt an empathy for both the main character and her mother as the truth was finally revealed after years of family stories that glorified past actions and deeds, many of them false or misleading.
Cao carefully delivers her narrative in a manner that allows the reader to perceive the subtleties of the American immigrant experience. For Mai’s mother, America is a place wholly unfamiliar and suspect. In order to navigate this new cultural milieu, Vietnamese immigrants created a “Little Saigon,” a community of refugees to reinforce cultural connections with their homeland and help one another adapt to their new life in the United States. Mai has chosen to adopt the American Dream and integrate as fully into American society as possible, but Cao illustrates the difficulty that many immigrants have in gaining unfettered access to mainstream American society. Often times, foreign born nationals are reminded of their racial or cultural otherness by native born Americans. Issues of identity become confounded for second generation immigrants when they are pulled between the cultural values of their families and the culture they experience in their day to day life outside of the home. The main argument seems to be that the modern American immigrant must alter or customize their cultural values and historical memory in order to fully integrate into American society. While many of these issues are handled within the context of Vietnamese immigrants in the late 1970s, I think that Cao’s understanding of how many people negotiate their understanding of the past can be expanded to look at many historical movements within and outside of the United States.
The mother in Cao’s novel experiences a sense of cognitive dissonance between her nostalgia for the traditional cultural ways of her little South Vietnamese farming village and its violent and disreputable history. In her mother’s final letter to her before committing suicide, Mai reads the truth of her grandfather, his relationship with the Vietcong, and her mother’s desire to change the past. In one lengthy passage towards the end of this letter, she admits that she still carries the burden of her past in spite of attempting to leave Mai with a “different course” that might have been possible. The burn on her face is a reminder of this burden and the fact that her father’s actions cannot be undone or reconciled. She explains that “karma is exactly like this, a continuing presence that is as ongoing as Baba Quan’s obsession, as indivisible as our notion of time itself. Our reality, you see, is a simultaneous past, present, and future." The past as an indivisible ongoing obsession was quite poetic and powerful to me. Any culture scarred by a past both sordid and sublime may be able to relate to the tendency to battle history daily as it tries to move forward and backwards at the same time. Reconciliation with a tarnished past doesn’t seem possible without acknowledgement, something that both individuals and societies must do if they intend to move forward. In a karmic version of things, the past “rips through one generation and tears apart the next."
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characters eventually become unhinged and alienated from society after returning home. Monkey Bridge takes a different look at the effects of war—the attempt to reinterpret the truth of what happened into a narrative that one can live with peaceably. Cao reminds us that after something as traumatic as a war, people must come to grips with what has transpired and integrate it into their postwar experience as smoothly as possible. She also details the experience of postwar dispossession, the intergenerational culture gap that occurs between parents and children in immigrant families, as well as the power of reinforced collective cultural memory among immigrant communities in the United States.While at first I was not drawn into the narrative of the postwar Vietnamese refugee experience, I became more interested once it appeared that the main character’s mother was attempting to recreate her past and establish a new identity for herself. By the end of the novel, I felt an empathy for both the main character and her mother as the truth was finally revealed after years of family stories that glorified past actions and deeds, many of them false or misleading.
Cao carefully delivers her narrative in a manner that allows the reader to perceive the subtleties of the American immigrant experience. For Mai’s mother, America is a place wholly unfamiliar and suspect. In order to navigate this new cultural milieu, Vietnamese immigrants created a “Little Saigon,” a community of refugees to reinforce cultural connections with their homeland and help one another adapt to their new life in the United States. Mai has chosen to adopt the American Dream and integrate as fully into American society as possible, but Cao illustrates the difficulty that many immigrants have in gaining unfettered access to mainstream American society. Often times, foreign born nationals are reminded of their racial or cultural otherness by native born Americans. Issues of identity become confounded for second generation immigrants when they are pulled between the cultural values of their families and the culture they experience in their day to day life outside of the home. The main argument seems to be that the modern American immigrant must alter or customize their cultural values and historical memory in order to fully integrate into American society. While many of these issues are handled within the context of Vietnamese immigrants in the late 1970s, I think that Cao’s understanding of how many people negotiate their understanding of the past can be expanded to look at many historical movements within and outside of the United States.
The mother in Cao’s novel experiences a sense of cognitive dissonance between her nostalgia for the traditional cultural ways of her little South Vietnamese farming village and its violent and disreputable history. In her mother’s final letter to her before committing suicide, Mai reads the truth of her grandfather, his relationship with the Vietcong, and her mother’s desire to change the past. In one lengthy passage towards the end of this letter, she admits that she still carries the burden of her past in spite of attempting to leave Mai with a “different course” that might have been possible. The burn on her face is a reminder of this burden and the fact that her father’s actions cannot be undone or reconciled. She explains that “karma is exactly like this, a continuing presence that is as ongoing as Baba Quan’s obsession, as indivisible as our notion of time itself. Our reality, you see, is a simultaneous past, present, and future." The past as an indivisible ongoing obsession was quite poetic and powerful to me. Any culture scarred by a past both sordid and sublime may be able to relate to the tendency to battle history daily as it tries to move forward and backwards at the same time. Reconciliation with a tarnished past doesn’t seem possible without acknowledgement, something that both individuals and societies must do if they intend to move forward. In a karmic version of things, the past “rips through one generation and tears apart the next."
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Awards
Dublin Literary Award (Longlist — 1999)
Kiriyama Prize (Finalist — 1997)
Pages
260
ISBN
0670873675 / 9780670873678