31



C

Cao, Lan (1961– )
Born and raised in Vietnam, Cao immigrated to
the United States in 1975 at the age of 13, just after
the end of the Vietnam War. She graduated from
Mount Holyoke College in 1983 with a B.A. in po-
litical science and from Yale School of Law in 1987
with a J.D. A talented and versatile individual, Cao
distinguished herself in many ways. After earn-
ing her degrees, she held an important clerkship
with Judge Constance Motley of the United States
District of New York, followed by a position at the
New York law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Whar-
ton & Garrison. Cao then taught international law
at Brooklyn Law School for six years. She was also
a Ford Foundation scholar for all her achievements
as an academic and as a writer. In 2001 she joined
the faculty of the College of William and Mary as
a law professor.
Besides writing and publishing within her pro-
fessional field, and reviewing film and books, she
coauthored Everything You Need to Know About
Asian Americans (1996) with Himilce Novas. As
a literary writer, however, she is best known for
her semiautobiographical fiction, Monkey Bridge
(1997). Based on her own immigrant experience
and family difficulties, Monkey Bridge is an im-
pressive first novel about generational and cultural
differences; it is also about bridging the gap be-
tween the East (war-torn Vietnam) and the West
(America). Mai, the teenaged protagonist, leads

the reader through a complicated and meandering

narrative of political intrigues, Vietnamese ances-

tral myths, and traditions. The narrative attempts

to reconstruct a family history during the Vietnam

War from the Vietnamese immigrant perspective.

The title of the novel is worthy of note because a

monkey bridge in Vietnam is a uniquely Vietnam-

ese traditional symbol of peasant life. It is often

frail, built with minimum support across small riv-

ers; thin, spindly bamboos are fastened together by

ropes so that the bridge is only maneuverable with

skillful and agile feet. For centuries, Vietnamese

peasantry has used this bridge system for mobility.

The novel’s title, in this respect, is symbolic of the

bridge that the protagonist and her mother have

to negotiate to cross between past and present, be-

tween Vietnam and America. Crossing the bridge

requires them to skillfully navigate through their

past and present—to learn to live with traumatic

war experiences and to reconstruct the memory of

escape from their homeland so as to make it palat-

able in their new adoptive home in America.

At the heart of Monkey Bridge is the troubled

relationship between the protagonist and her

mother. This relationship is eloquently delineated

by the author through subtle yet hauntingly me-

andering prose. The young protagonist wants to

acculturate into the American mainstream soci-

ety through school, popular media, and everyday

interaction with Americans, but she also wants