When Heaven and Earth Changed Places- Le Ly Hayslip (1989)

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When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese Woman’s Journey from War to Peace is the remarkable first memoir of Le Ly Hayslip, describing her return as a Viet Kieu (‘overseas Vietnamese’) to the land she was born in, and remembering her tumultuous youth in war-torn Vietnam that led her to flee.  Her return to Vietnam in 1986 after an absence of sixteen years was one that was fraught with paranoia and risk as the country was just beginning to open its doors to outsiders and Hayslip herself had once been condemned to death by the Viet Cong. The journey is an important pilgrimage for Hayslip to make peace with the people and land she left behind, and her memoir is gripping, moving and remarkable.

It is perhaps surprising that the title of the book refers to heaven and earth, and not to hell, as this is what much of Hayslip’s experience resemble to the reader. The author entered the world as Phung Thi Le Ly, the sixth and last child of peasant parents in a village then known as Ky La in Central Vietnam, near the city of Danang.  Her experience of life was dominated by war- between the French and the Viet Minh until 1954, followed by a civil war between the North and the South, aided by their American allies. By the time Le Ly was six years old, the country had been partitioned in two by the ruling of an international convention, with her village designated as part of the new South Vietnamese republic.

The lives of Ky La villagers were dictated by the pressures applied to them both by soldiers of the Republic of Vietnam, who came by day to secure the village, and the Viet Cong, who nonetheless were able to infiltrate at night. By fourteen years old, Le Ly had experienced torture in Republican prisons for assisting the Viet Cong; later she was to be denounced by the communists. Certainly, life for peasants was one of obeying orders from both sides, trying not to be caught out by ‘the enemy’ (a phrase that can be applied to government soldiers or Viet Cong as necessary), and generally keeping their heads down while continuing the daily struggle for survival. Such was the alienation of peasants to the ideologies of both sides through this constant fear that many families would have a son that had gone to fight for the North Vietnam Army- a ‘Hanoi son’, or for the Viet Cong, as well as one that had been sent south to fight for the Republican cause. It is saddening that on returning to Vietnam eleven years after the end of the war, Hayslip was to find rival factions running through her own family still.

The origin of the title of the book, in fact, as well as of Oliver Stone’s 1993 film adaptation of Hayslip’s life story, Heaven and Earth, comes from the Vietnamese proverb that says that humans live between Me Dat- Mother Earth, and Ong Troi- Father Heaven, but that Heaven and Earth may change places throughout the course of history, leaving humans in turmoil. Reading the story of Hayslip’s life, it is tragic to see the hardships that became the sparky, amiable protagonist and the inevitable-seeming slide that her life took as a result of the difficulties of survival during war. Enduring torture at the hands of Republican soldiers and rape by Viet Cong while still a teenager, Hayslip’s life was to take her to the bright lights of Saigon for a brief period working as a nanny until she became pregnant with her employer’s child, and then to Danang where she lived on the streets, sold contraband goods and worked as a bar-girl and one-time prostitute to support her mother and child. Through an older American boyfriend, she was finally able to make her getaway in the hope of a better life in the United States. Despite the heart-breaking events that befall her, Hayslip is never remorseful or self-pitying about her past. Her strength of character is as astonishing as the story of her life itself.

The memoir was originally written in English and is clearly aimed at a foreign, not Vietnamese, audience. In her prologue, entitled ‘Dedication to Peace’, Hayslip directly addresses any American former GIs who may be reading her book, as well as anyone who ‘knows the Vietnam war, or any war, only by stories and pictures’. Following her returning visit to Vietnam, Hayslip established the East Meets West foundation in 1988 to help to ‘heal the wounds of war’ through education, healthcare and community projects in Asia. In 1999, she also established the Global Village Foundation, a Vietnamese non-profit organisation based in Hoi An that works on grassroots, sustainable community development projects around Quang Nam province, where Hayslip comes from. Her second memoir, Child of War, Woman of Peace, recounts her experiences of adapting to life in America, published in 1993. In 1995, Hayslip was honoured by the California State Assembly for her humanitarian work.

This book explained to me better than anything else I have read the realities of life for the average Vietnamese family during war. Hayslip lucidly relates the terrible harassment faced by ordinary people by both sides of the conflict and the alienation felt as a result. For Le Ly and her family, compliance with the soldiers that passed through the village of Ky La was a matter of survival, not ideology. Hayslip demonstrates how the destruction of ancient values such as the importance of community resulted from this battle for survival. I was very moved by this book and I feel it is a great testament to the reality of life in Vietnam during the American war. The writing is very absorbing and the non-linear structure of the book, traversing between the story of her return to Vietnam and that of her early life, keeps the narrative gripping. Hayslip’s memoir serves as a harrowing reminder of the ugliness and cruelty of the average peasant experience of war in Vietnam, the depths to which this pervaded their lives and the extent to which its legacy remained on her return many years later.