Of Monkey Bridges and Bánh Mì Sandwiches: From Saigon to Texas

A quietly affecting and laugh-out-loud funny immigrant memoir tells the story of a girl and her family as they flee Vietnam to America in the 1980s.


- Wall Street Journal bestseller
- Amazon bestseller in Memoir
- Publishers Weekly BookLife Prize Finalist, #1 Memoir in 2018

'In dark times like these, the ability to find what binds us is vital. In Monkey Bridges and Bánh Mì Sandwiches, Oanh Ngo Usadi brings empathy and vivid storytelling to her young life as a Vietnamese girl fleeing the country with her family after the Vietnam War. At once an ode to the beauty of her home country and a harrowing depiction of the horrors of leaving it for an uncertain new life, Monkey Bridges is the sort of book we need right now, to remind us that for all our differences, we share love, fear, and the hope of redemption. As Usadi and her family slowly adjust to their new lives in Texas, it becomes clear that theirs is a quintessentially American story.' -- Julie Powell, author of best-selling memoir, Julie & Julia,