The Monkey Bridge

by Lan Cao

Marlene interviewed Vietnamese lawyer and author, Lan Cao, about her book, The Monkey Bridge.

      When asked how she got to the United States, Lan Cao replied, "Like Mai in The Monkey Bridge, I came to the United States with an officer who had befriended me in Saigon.  He took me out of the country and I lived with his family for several months before my parents arrived.  I was 13 at the time.  My adjustment to the United States was similar to my main character's transition."

     Ms. Lan Cao is a professor of international law at Brooklyn Law School in New York.  She left Vietnam in 1975 and later attended Yale Law School.  She was born in Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City). Her family was upper-class and French educated. 

She reports that her family was torn apart during the war.  Some relatives were on the side of the South Vietnamese government.  A few others supported the Viet Cong.  When they had family get-togethers, political conflicts were bypassed for the periods of their reunions. 

     When asked what part of the book is autobiographical or represents the immigrant experience of Vietnamese refugees, Ms. Cao reported that there's a bit of literary truth even if not literal truth in everything that I wrote in The Monkey Bridge. Still, lots of what's in the book is autobiographical.  And even if an event did not actually occur, the emotions surrounding the fictional event in the book could nonetheless be deemed autobiographical.

Certainly the parts that have to do with immigration as an act of transformation and reinvention deal with the general experiences of immigrants.  The parts that deal with the switching of place, so to speak, between parents and child ( for the child becomes like a parent) are certainly immigration experiences in general, as well. 

The migration experiences of Vietnamese refugees are specifically related to the war experience.  That is, as refugees from a country associated with the bitter, divisive war, refugees from Vietnam faced additional hurdles, and  additional experiences there were different from those other immigrants. "

     "For example, it has to do with the fact that in the early '80s, there was a certain degree of hostility from some parts of the American public.  This was related directly to the fact that the U.S. did not win the war there. Anything associated with that experience was not looked at  very positively by the American population. "

     When asked if she was working on another book, Ms. Cao responded, "Yes, I am. It's a novel about illegal immigration from China.  It's a love story involving two people who left China on a boat.  The journey was organized by organized crime in southern China. The boat sank off the coast of Queens, New York. 

This is based on real events that happened in 1993 and the boat in that incident was called the Golden Venture.  I fictionalized that account.  My characters will make it ashore and work in the underground economy of New York's Chinatown.

     If you would  like to gain insight into the experiences of Asian immigrants, Lan Cao's books will give you much food for thought.  All of life is like a monkey bridge, and the most important advice is not to be afraid.

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