Monkey Bridge--Reader Response

Monkey Bridge, by Lan Cao, is the story of two Vietnamese refugees, a mother and daughter, trying to live in America in 1979. The novel showcases the difficulties of emigration and transition for different generations while giving beautiful descriptions of the Vietnamese culture itself. But more than this, Monkey Bridge is the story of a teenage girl trying to make amends with her traumatized mother.

When I first read about “The Accident [that] had been diagnosed as permanent” which consisted of scar tissue which spread across Cao’s mother’s face, I assumed that it was somehow symbolic of her mother’s permanent state of distress while living in America. But upon finding out at the end of the novel that the scar was actually caused by “Clusters of bright yellow flames [that] burst through a high-explosive mix of gasoline a jelly” (251), not a kitchen flame which “caught on a silk scarf loosely wrapped around her neck” (3), I think that the scar actually symbolizes the inner torment she carries with her always because of the shame from her father’s actions.

One thing that I thought was interesting was the way Cao’s mother seemed to be two different women (if not more). She is a haggling French-educated woman in Vietnam who believes in the healing power of charms and astrology, while being a grocer in America who is always worried. Also, she cannot speak English well and relies on her daughter to do it for her (example of apartment rooms), but writes beautifully of her homeland in exquisite imagery (example). Also, Cao’s mother is enthralled with motherhood but seems very bitter over wifehood, although she left herself three years to mourn the death of her husband.

Lan Cao stresses the differences between the United States and Vietnam in the book as well. “In the United States, there was no such thing as ‘one wrong move.” She describes the states as a place of limitless possibilities where people can rewrite their endings (example) and even sometimes their beginnings (example).

One thing that seemed very important to be me was the symbolism of the sea horse. Vietnam is described as “a long twisted peninsula hanging on the caost of the South China Sea like a starved sea horse waiting for happier days” (150). And then her “mother’s silhouette cast a faint sea-horse curve against the dark window-shine” (161). And even later her mother describes her own body “hunched and twisted like the sea-horse shape of Vietnam itself” (174). Finally Cao ends the book by stating “Outside, a faint sliver of what only two weeks ago had been a full moon dangled like a sea horse from the sky.” I’m wonder why this theme reoccurred so much throughout the book. Possibly because Cao wanted to show that her mother was also a symbol of her homeland. The narrator is uncertain of the history of her country but respects it, but is also ashamed of it, like her mother (example of ashamed of country, example of ashamed of mother, scar?) She also has trouble leaving her country’s past and tries to get it back because she has been taught her soul is there, and she has been taught that she and her mother share the same DNA and karma.

The mother-daughter relationship of the book was the most intriguing to me because I don’t really relate to it. My mother and I have a very close relationship in which we talk about everything, but Lan’s only link to her mother is reading the “papers” that she writes late at night which she thinks she is forbidden from. The relationship seems very close when the two describe it, but also very distant as well. They know and love each other and are willing to make sacrifices, but they have a lot of trouble talking about what they feel and want. Finally, Cao’s mother feels that she must kill herself just so she can provide freedom for her daughter. The mother daughter roldes are reversed because Lan is forced to take care of her mother after the stroke and even before this, Lan had to become “the keeper of the word” (37) and her mother became a child (35).

The title of the novel confused me for a long time because the idea of a monkey bridge is not introduced until page 109. Even then it is not until much later that we can see the significance of a monkey bridge. A monkey bridge is “how rivers are crossed by boatless peasants” (179). And I believe they are a true symbolism for the “one wrong move” idea. Almost as if life is a giant river which with must cross and our choices create a thin path, almost impossible to cross. One wrong move and we can fall off, like Lan’s mother.