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Title: Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao ISBN: 0-14-026361-6 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (19 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: Vietnam Vietnam
Comment: 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.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Real Vietnam
Comment: 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: 2
Summary: Needs some serious editing...
Comment: This book needs a lot of editing, since in it's present form it wanders aimlessly and without purpose for pages and pages before anything of substance occurs. The book and its attempt to explore the spirit world seems like a spirit: hard to grasp and unsatisfying. For better literature on Vietnam, try Le Le Hayslip's "When Heave and Earth Changed Places," which has its feet on the ground (despite the title) and a much greater emotional impact.
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Title: Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media by Susan J. Douglas ISBN: 0812925300 Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA) Pub. Date: 01 April, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Lady Sings the Blues/With a Revised Discography by Billie Holiday, William Dufty ISBN: 0140067620 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Song of Solomon (Oprah's Book Club (Paperback)) by Toni Morrison ISBN: 0452260116 Publisher: Plume Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1987 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Father, Son & Co. : My Life at IBM and Beyond by THOMAS J. WATSON, PETER PETRE ISBN: 0553380834 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 29 February, 2000 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs by John Bowe, Marisa Bowe, Sabin Streeter ISBN: 0609807072 Publisher: Three Rivers Press (CA) Pub. Date: 21 August, 2001 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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