Monkey Bridge

In a strange, unknown landscape such as a new culture, individuals long since used to old customs may face challenges in overcoming these differences and succeeding in society. In a new culture, people become dependent on those around them more fluent in the new society’s ways and lose their connection to the humans around them who seem too challenging to comprehend. The excerpt from the novel Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao exposes readers to this world through the eyes of a girl from Saigon who must help her mother orient herself to American life. In the excerpt, the girl describes the contrasts between her mother’s great shopping abilities in the open markets of Saigon and the complete bafflement caused by American supermarkets. In the excerpt
When still in Saigon, the mother flourishes in interpersonal interactions. When at the market, the mother interacts with the salesmen to haggle and bargain in “a mating dance, a match of wills” (1). The word “dance” implies that the interaction is more complicatedly choreographed than a simple conversation; as a dancer must have either a natural or learned talent to dance, the mother must have an innate ability to interact with the salesmen. The phrase “match of wills” demonstrates that the process where the mother meets and bests most of the salesmen when buying products is a difficult battle, as shown by the word “match.” The markets in Saigon are of great complexity, which the mother handles flawlessly, showing both her great ability in social interactions and her belief in her ability to interact socially. In contrast, once in America, the mother cannot understand the social cues due to cultural differences, leaving her feeling alienated. When a store clerk waves her over with a wave normally used for dogs in Saigon, she laments that “even the store clerks look down on us” (2). The word “even” shows that she finds this hard to believe or the lowest of lows, showing that this interaction is emotionally damaging to her. “Look down” connotes that the store clerks think worse of her, so completely backwards to the respect that she saw salesmen have for her in Saigon, in America she sees them as behaving in a disrespectful way to her. This difference is caused by the change of cultural norms in the way the shop is set up and the way hand gestures work, so the change in the mother’s interactions with salesclerks shows the pain and estrangement that changing social expectations can