Rating: 
Summary: Monkey Bridge and Missing Link
Review: I have recommended this book to all my siblings because not only does it indeed represent a bridge between cultures and generations - in the book, between Mai's and her mother's - but it also provides the "missing link" between the in-between generations: mine and my siblings', who are slightly older than Lan Cao, who knew Vietnam before the war kept us from going too much out of Saigon, were mostly educated in Europe and knew nothing about the American education system until we had to send our children there, and our children, who never knew Vietnam at all (or came to America at such a young age that they do not remember it) and are entirely Americanized. As such, it is fascinating to us, the adults, and instructive to our children. Mai (and through her, Lan Cao herself) is really from that "in-between" generation. It is interesting to see how much and how well (or not so well) she remembers things Vietnamese, things we loved ourselves - the Tet celebrations, the Mid-Autumn Festival when all the kids went out of doors carrying gaily lit lanterns in animal or flower shapes, the legends we grew up with, the nursery rhymes or mnemonic ditties in Vietnamese or French, etc. I was amused to see how, with time and distance, and having been so young herself when she left, she got everything a little bit wrong - the worse mistake, of course, is her saying repeatedly that Vietnam is SOUTH of the Equator, whereas the southernmost part of the country is still around the 10th parallel NORTH. And irritating is her tendency to use tautology, like "fictional reimaginings" (imagination is fiction by definition) or "aerial helicopters" (who ever heard of ground helicopters?) What is really the attraction is the memories and atmosphere of the book. The story itself is interesting, but not convincing, as other critics have pointed out. Like the refugees she talks about, Lan Cao reinvents her past. Of course, she can do so because this is supposed to be a novel, not an autobiography, but it is so obvious that Mai is, in a very great part, Lan herself - the way she left Vietnam before the fall of Saigon, the American colonel her parents sent her with, her adaptation to the States, her mother's stay in hospital... But Mai's background is not Lan's, and all the melodrama of her mother's birth and her grandfather's Baba Quan's real political affiliation sound terribly artificial (and shame on the Kirkus Review for having given the final twist away!) Despite its flaws and limited outlook, it is a very worthwhile book and I recommend it not only to my siblings and cousins but to anyone with an immigrant's experience, or who wishes to understand that experience. I also recommend in that regard Lan Cao's other book, "Everything You Need To Know About Asian American History".
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Summary: Vietnamese Girl Finds New Home in America
Review: I personally like reading this novel because the novel is a story about a Vietnamese girl brought to the United States to live. I like it because I can relate to her experience and feelings, also the fears she encounters when first stepping feet into U.S. grounds. With the fact that her mother was not in good health, she was forced to help her mother and herself to survive. Not knowing who her grandfather, was bound to find out. The protagonist was named Mai. She was brought to America after the Vietnam War has just settled down by a close English friend her mother had met. From there on she lives in an apartment home in Virginia neighbored by some friends from Vietnam. There is quite a mystery in the story that is well sorted out at the end. The story was interesting because it kept me thinking like any suspense story or movie would. I would personally reccommend this to any reader; however, if you are from ethnic Vietnamese then you should read this to learn more about the war and what it caused.
Rating: 
Summary: Literary story
Review: I read this book torn between wanting to go really fast to the end to find out what happened and on the other hand, wishing to slow down to enjoy every beautifully crafted sentence. The interior world of the main character and her mother is just as interesting as the exterior world they live in -- descriptions fascinating and most of all, written in a most engaging style. I was very touched by the plight of these immigrants and also learned a lot about the war in VIetnam from an angle different from what I had studied in my history book. But most of all it's a human story, and even if it deals with a historical event like the war, it doesn't do so in a blunt political manner. It's a literary book and a good story.
Rating:
Summary: Love it!
Review: I was given this book for my birthday by my mother and I love it. I think the story between the mother and daughter is just so moving. And I also love all the cultural details included in the book so that even when we are reading and being engrossed in the story line, we are also exposed naturally, not didactically at all, to the way of life as it is lived in Saigon and in the immigrant community in Virginia. I'm just several miles from Falls Church, Virginia, myself and having read the book, I've made it a point of going to visit the various Vietnamese pockets there. It's a whole new world, the fabric stores, nail salons, barber shops, groceries, restaurants. I love it all and I love the book. It's got everything, story, style, history. I recommend it highly because I was very touched by this story.
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Summary: The Real Vietnam
Review: In her book, Monkey Bridge, Lan Cao uses her lyrical figurative language and genuine anecdotes as a crowbar to pry open a crate full of memories of the scarred heart of Vietnam and the Vietnamese immigrant experience to realistically present Vietnam as more than a war and Vietnamese immigrants as more than refugees. Her figurative language and anecdotes gives her writing a style of realism that shows the brutal scars left from the Vietnam War on not only the Americans, but more importantly, the Vietnamese. From the first page, Lan Cao begins painting her memories of her childhood in Vietnam with her poetic diction and alliteration. She draws from her real life experience as a volunteer at her local hospital to show the stream of consciousness of Mai Nguyen, the Vietnamese teenage narrator. Mai recalls "the smell of blood, warm, and wet, rose from the floor and settled into the solemn stillness of the hospital air" when visiting her ailing mother in the hospital (1). In one of her many flashbacks, Mai remembers how a maimed soldier was "curled like a newborn, vicious and pink and covered from head to toe in placenta" (72). This simile transports the reader to the vicious Vietnam War and displays to the reader more than a library of war videos could. After Mai is airlifted out of Saigon because of the fall of Vietnam, she must, like all immigrants, learn the difficult language of English. In another flashback, Mai remembers how she was constantly "collecting words like a beggar gathering rain with an earthen pan" (36). This simile realistically describes the desperate manner instilled in all immigrants in which they must adjust themselves as fast as possible and puts the readers in an immigrant's pair of tattered shoes. Besides figurative language, the anecdotes of Monkey Bridge provide the story with a sense of realism. Lan Cao writes much of the book in diary form to reveal the stream of consciousness of the mom and give the reader a true taste of the distant relationship between an immigrant mom and an assimilated daughter. For instance, one night Mai and her mother are watching a moralistic episode of The Bionic Woman about how children should always listen to their parents. When her mother asks her what happened in the episode, Mai translates the story to one about the virtues of letting children do what they want. This anecdote shows how immigrant families often become fractured and how the role of parent and child become switched. The parent must learn a new culture from their more assimilated child. Legends such as the one of the sly Trung Sisters who defeated the invading Chinese Army depict the Vietnamese morals and way of life. For example, Mai goes into a college interview with the same strategy as the Trung Sisters when defending their country, focusing on their strong points while never showing their weak ones. These stories provide an insightful view on the morals and values Vietnamese people are raised on. Through her poetic figurative language and her realistic anecdotes, Lan Cao ultimately offers the reader a gem of knowledge: Vietnam is more than a blemish on the smooth surface of American history and that the Vietnamese are more than bystanders in a war, they are human beings.
Rating:
Summary: Vietnam Vietnam
Review: In her semi-autobiographical novel Monkey Bridge, Lan Cao displays Vietnam not as a war, but as the bond that ties together a mother's relationship with her daughter, by brilliantly manipulating descriptive imagery, while incorporating profound motifs. The author creates an adventure for the reader through her meticulous details, which draw the reader into Cao's spellbinding flashbacks of her experiences of war. Cao incorporates the experience and struggles of an immigrant family consisting of a mother and daughter to depict the difficulty of adjusting to a completely different change in culture and beliefs, and to give the novel substance and meaning. The motif of the mother-daughter role reversal reveals Cao's understanding of the attitude immigrants had towards the war and adjusting in America. Although the novel is told in the daughter Mai's point of view, Cao cleverly establishes the mother's thoughts and feelings through the use of a diary. The diary explains Vietnam's superb beauty, delicacies, and traditions, while upholding the plot of the story. Through the diary, the reader discovers the truth behind Baba Quan, who represents everthing that brings pain, suffering, and bad karma to the Nguyen family. The diary also explains the mother's disillusionment towards the hustle and bustle in America, and confusion of her daugher's unwilliness to respect the Vietnamese way. Thus, Cao uses Mai to represent the immigrant with an American point of view, while the mother represents the Vietnamese position. The daughter tries to fit into the pressures of being a teenager in America while being raised in the strict, traditional boundaries of her home; whereas her mother stuggles to accept the loss of her father while tyring to survive in a country that contradicts everything she stands for. Cao wanted to repudiate the fallacy that Vietnam is just a war. She wanted to show Vietnam's true culture and heart, the part that is overshadowed by the aftermath of war. Through the use of the diary, Cao is able to argue her position as a Vietnamese immigrant herself, and defend her native country from the facts and from the fallacies; thus, showing the true meaning behind Vietnam. Cao proves that behind the bloody curtain, Vietnam represents a garden of culture, tradition, and beauty that blooms and continues to bloom for the world to see. Although the bloodshed of war brought destruction and massacre to a beatiful country, it fails to bury the power of faith and hope that resides in the stong bond of a family.
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Summary: The Vietnamese Version of the American Dream
Review: Lan Cao weaves a web of fine silk through her vivid imagery and strong motifs to show off to the world her home country Vietnam as something more than a war and to portray a daughter's relationship with her mother. Cao brings back many memories from the time when she lived in Vietnam, each time, describing it vibrantly with many details to make the reader feel as if they were truly there. To fill in the gaps between these meticulous descriptions, Cao uses a family consisting of a mother and a daughter and shows their relationship. The motif of the color of blood ties these two contrasting strands of silk together to present the main idea, the web, to portray the "Vietnamese version of the American Dream; a new spin, the Vietnam spin, to the old immigrant faith in the future"(40). The color of blood clearly is the color of war. The war scenes clearly depict the terrors of violence. Yet, these terrible colors are also used to celebrate the traditional rites of marriage. The red wedding dress, the virginal rites, and the lucky red paper all seem innocuous, but they have the potential to be virulent as well; especially when things go wrong. The mother in the story tries to escape from the violence of war, where the daughter tries to escape from the terrors of the old culture she fears. Cao wanted to show that violence does not only comes from war, but also from everyday domestic living. The delicate yet massive web Cao creates circumnavigates to correlate times of peace and war together. In America, many denizens see Vietnam as nothing more than a war. Cao uses detailed descriptions of her home country Vietnam to describe the beautiful countryside, traditions, traditional food, and the celebrations for the reader. Cao wanted to show the reader that Vietnam also had a history and was not just a battlefield. She wanted to reveal to the world, the hidden side of the web that many people seem to neglect; the side that shows Vietnam's heart, its culture. As an aftermath of the war, all the immigrants struggled to make a living in an alien country, to prosper. This obviously shows the Vietnamese influenced by the American Dream, but with a slight twist. The intricate web Cao designs shows the reader the beauty of Vietnam's culture and a daughter's relationship with her mother through her usage of vivid imagery and a strong motif of the color of blood. Through Cao's descriptions, inferences, and the relationship of a mother and daughter, the American Dream can obviously be noted.
Rating:
Summary: An Immigrant's Secret Life
Review: Lan Cao's Monkey Bridge should, when it receives the acknowledgment it deserves, earn a high place in the canon of Asian American literature. This is not merely an idiosyncratic bit of ethnic literature. It stands with the best memoirs of the immigrant experience in that it tells our story, the American story.
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Summary: disconected
Review: Mai the narrator, is a Vietnamese girl who was sent to the US at the age of 13 a few months before the fall of Saigon in 1975; her mother escapes in the American air lift a few months later and joins her in America. This is the story of her mother's struggle to adjust to living in America, the conflict between Mai and her mother around Mai's decision to leave for college and Mai's attempts to discover what happened to her Grandfather, who was apparently left behind in Viet Nam when her mother left on the American Airlift. Their story is set against her mother's memories of growing up and living in Viet Nam and her mother's attempt to create a new (and, it turns out, largely fictional) past for herself as a basis for her daughter's new life in America. The story hints at mysterious events in Viet Nam, and delivers a surprising ending. The descriptions of life in Saigon and in a hamlet in the Mekong delta are interesting, evocative and beautifully rendered, but seem strangely disconnected from the forces of colonialism, nationalism and combat that engulfed the country during the times remembered. And the relationship between Mai and her mother - the center point of the novel - is disappointingly lifeless. The drama here is in the events of memory and in the final reckoning between memory and actuality, and not in the current situation between narrator and her mother. Unlike Snow Falling on Cedars, the events of the past and the often harsh experiece of immigration do not have a dramatic effect -- or indeed any effect -- on the events of the present. They are disconnected.
Rating:
Summary: Monkey bridge
Review: Monkey Bridge is a wonderful example of an author putting her true emotions into a touching and well-written story. Lan Cao starts off by introducing the character Mai Nguyen who portrays all the feelings that the author is feeling throughout the narration. Mai recalls throughout the story, the many events in her life that has made an impact on her and others surrounding her, such as what her grandfather was like and the "incident" that broke him up from the family. Mai brings her feelings and emotions into the story with vivid descriptions like her observations in the hospital-using words such as "smell of blood, wet, warm, and how it rose into the soleman air. The writing techniques Lan Cao uses include a wide range of figurative language, diction, alliteration, anecdotes, and also techniques to give the reader a sense of realism. The stories told through Lan Cao's character, Mai, depicts the life of a vietnamese, how life would be during the war, and addapting to a new environment/culture. Through Mai's descriptions and stories of her grandfather you feel for her loss of a loved one and the greif of basically being forced to change their way of living. Cao uses a very unique technique of linking key words or senses together such as the color red. I noticed that she kept a constant going thourghout the story of red object, whether being of good nature or bad. The "red" blood, the color of red for war the traditions of wedding dresses and lucky red paper. Cao uses sensery descriptions such as these to, as I see it, bring the reader into the story and understand the feeling behind it a little bit more. Overall the book is a very well-written narrative that not only overpours with vivid descriptions and feelins of sensitivity but also points out very meaningful morals or lessons such as that violence does not come from only war but from other forms of society (domestic sides of our society today). Cao is definitly a talented and gifted writer, this showing through a must-read novel that you surely will not beable to put down and will want to read over and over again.
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