Monkey Bridge Author:Lan Cao Hailed by critics and writers as powerful, important fiction, Monkey Bridge charts the unmapped territory of the Vietnamese American experience in the aftermath of war. — Like navigating a monkey bridge -- a bridge, built of spindly bamboo, used by peasants for centuries -- the narrative traverses perilously between wor... more »lds past and present, East and West, in telling two interlocking stories: one, 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 Bridge is 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 of the future.« less
A Vietnamese refugee family tries to adjust Eastern sensibilities to their strange new American lives, while digging for the truth of what happened just before the collapse of Saigon.