Was it Viet Thanh Nguyen who hipped me to this? I'm remembering someone talking about how this is one of the few Vietnam War stories in English told by someone who wasn't part of the pre-1975 elite, but an ordinary peasant who did her best in a rough fucking time, and that as clunky as it was, it had the virtue of being extraordinarily honest.

That's correct. Completely. I've spent enough time in the backwaters of Southeast Asia to -- if not "know" what peasants in this part of the world to think -- at least have a basic grasp on the common worldviews of agricultural societies 'round these parts, and the characters have a certain familiarity. Yes, it is clunky. Yes, the "USA number one!" parts are cringe as fuck (especially when you consider Hayslip's horror at the Vietnamese fight against the Khmer Rouge, something in which history has pretty absolutely vindicated Vietnam). But it's... so goddamn honest. Not as the voice of a writer, but as the voice of a witness.

Gripping tail of a young lady caught between the two Vietnams during the war. It is a fascinating read and highlights the struggles of the war from the Vietnamese people’s perspectives. Many in Vietnam were just as conflicted and confused about the war as those outside the country, and while most Vietnamese wanted independence, many from the same communities and families differed greatly about how to achieve it. This is the story of people living in a border town during the war – caught between the North and South. It is an amazing story of struggle and perseverance. Well worth the read to get a not so common perspective of the war.

I am really grateful she decided to write this book, to write her story, one i think everyone should know about because she has experience so much of the things that war brings on innocent people. What i find the most interesting is that she was born into the war and embraced it as some exciting project and, through her good virtues, saw it for what it really was. I don't like reading stories like this because it is torturous to read them. They are inhumane realities you wish never happened, it is difficult to believe what you are reading although you know they really did happen.

I read this book many years ago, and I still remember how powerful, emotional, and in some parts upseting the book was. Set in the 1960s Vietnam, life was a living hell for many of the population and this books clever story telling drags the reader into the nightmare. What you expect from a story line engulfed in a war torn country, were simple, innocent average people do what ever they can to survive. I have to place this book in my favourites list. Would like to read it again in the future.

This book is a 2 part tale of Le Ly. Every chapter contains a part of her as a child growing up in Vietnam and the other as an adult visiting her home country. Due to the structure of the plot, it sheds light to the reader's curiousity on Le Ly's childhood journey whenever the plot shifts into adulthood.

Without spoiling anything. the part of her childhood starts off with how she was given life, followed by how she was brought up and raised and how she finally left for America. Alot was mentioned about her family and friends as the book revolves around that theme, so in a way that too provides some idea on the way of life for the many individuals that is within Le Ly's circle.

The second part talks about her adulthood and her journey back home to visit lost and love ones. Le Ly finds that much has changed on the outset of Vietnam, but the people she knew are still tied to the past. As such, there lies the difficulty for her to reconcile and reconnect with various individuals, even with family.

A great book about the life of a young girl in the time of war. I think this book was great insight to the Vietnamese war because it brings to life the harshness of what war really is. You get a different view because you get to see how tough it was to choose sides, protect family, maintain honor, and also dignity. There are some pretty sad events that occur, and you also get a look at a not so loving side of the American soldiers who intruded a foreign land but if anything it makes the book more candid. Highly reccomend!

A touching and deeply heartfelt account of a girl's life in Vietnam in the French and American wars. An important testimony to the suffering of people of all sides and their resilience in the face of violence to build a better future for themselves. Looking at Vietnam today, its beautiful country and peoples, I think the author can safely look back and be proud of what has been achieved in such a short space of time.

Everything we knew commanded us to fight. Our ancestors called us to war. Our myths and legends called us to war. Our parents' teachings called us to war. Uncle Ho's cadre called us to war. Even President Diem had called us to fight for the very thing we now believed he was betraying -an independent Vietnam. Should an obedient child be less than an ox and refused to do her duty?
And so the war began and became an insatiable dragon that roared around Ky La. By the time I turned thirteen, that dragon has swallowed me up.

Really enlightening read into Le Ly's life and experiences through the Vietnam War. It gave an interesting perspective into the Vietnamese culture and I really enjoyed learning about it having visited Hanoi once in my life. It gave me new insights on what the people experienced during those hardships. I would not recommend this book for those individuals with weak stomachs, it's quite graphic at times. It's amazing what she survived and suffered with her family.

We all know war is a bad thing, but reading this book really gives an insight as to how it damages the land over which its raged. The way community and life is ripped to pieces and the fabric of society unravels and is rewoven as something less appealing is well portrayed. To come through this and be able to share the story as well as attempt to rebuild and heal says a lot for the authoress.

The violence is never glorified, nor is the atrocities, but told in a way that taps into your emotions and grips at you unforgettably. Forget the film, even though the key events are portrayed, the book is far tougher with the Hollywood romanticism stripped way.

If you want an understanding of how war affected the people of Vietnam, and how much of a piece of heaven it destroyed you need to read this book. I finished reading this on the train and it was hard not to cry my eyes out, not just for the events and family of LeLy Hayslip, but for all the people she knew and met and the beautiful way of life that is so sadly lost now.

This book is the closest I will ever get to understanding my father's childhood as a peasant in South Vietnam during the war that Americans know as the Vietnam War and the Vietnamese know as the American War.

I heard vaguer, child-censored versions of my dad's stories of the pressures of two sides (Viet Cong & Republican) in his village, and the euphemism of being taken away for "personal discussion" by the Viet Cong, but reading this memoir of a woman with different-yet-similar experiences during said war without my dad to discuss it with, and as an adult with greater understanding, hit me more powerfully more than I could have imagined.

The tone occasionally strikes as a bit preachy, especially in the final third of the book, but it doesn't make the memoir of Le Ly's wartime experience, or her return and subsequent efforts to repair the wounds of that war—whether with her nuclear family or her countrymen—any less compelling. We're further along the path of reconciliation with our war wounds than we were when Le Ly originally wrote this book, but the themes of this work can and should be applied to anywhere or anyone who has been ravaged by war's often-debilitating experiences.

My father would have appreciated this book and its mission. I would encourage anyone to read it, though I'm not sure everyone would get as much out of it as I personally did because of my own Vietnamese heritage.

This autobiography of a young girl caught in the ravages of the Vietnam War is an excellent story that will move you. This book is so filled with raw and brutal memories of this war that it is a miracle that it was ever written. It must have been quite a release to get all of those memories out into public. This book shows us the human and inhumane face of war as we see the kindness and the rage that war brings forth. It was so sad and so redemptive to read.