“For you see, the face of destiny or luck or god that gives us war also gives us other kinds of pain: the loss of health and youth; the loss of loved ones or of love; the fear that we will end our days alone. Some people suffer in peace the way others suffer in war. The special gift of that suffering, I have learned, is how to be strong while we are weak, how to be brave when we are afraid, how to be wise in the midst of confusion, and how to let go of that which we can no longer hold. In this way, anger can teach forgiveness, hate can teach us love, and war can teach us peace.”

4⭐

Essential for anyone wishing to understand the thinking of those caught up in the late war in Vietnam. A window into the culture and belief system of the ordinary people, through the story of one extraordinary woman.

This is actually the first book I think I have ever read about the Vietnam War. It certainly gives a different perspective than that of an American GI. I have always believed this war was simply about the spread of communism and how we, the American People, had to stop it at all cost. Those were some pretty high costs and I don't think we accomplished much of anything except the loss of life on both the American and Vietnamese sides.

Like Sorrows of War this was another fascinating look into the lives of the Vietnamese during the 1960’s & 70’s. In this book we even get a bit of a glimpse into French occupation in the 50’s.
The perspective of Le Ly is filed with both emotion and a stiff upper lip. She shows a lot of grit and inner strength during episodes of extreme trauma and her saga is both inspiring and sad on many levels.
My only complaint is that at times I felt she tended to ramble and give numerous examples that made the same point. It’s a small complaint and detracted only in the sense of the writing (as though she was attempting to fill up more pages), and not in the sense that it diminished the impact of the story.
This book does a great job in pointing out the wide sweeping effects of war, how it affects each person’s life and how a country’s landscape is altered when people start killing and bombing each other.
From reading this book and Sorrows of War I’ve learned that there was a lot more to the conflicts of twentieth century Vietnam than wars between communism and capitalism.
This book will stay with me for a long time.

This historical memoir is often graphic, a disturbing read in light of the author's experiences during the Vietnam/American War, but I'm sure it is accurate. When Le Ly was just twelve years old Americans landed in her small central-Vietnam village, and both the government and the Viet Cong fought there. The war raged, fear and mistrust reigned among the village, and people tried to survive. They were told that they were fighting to preserve their ancient rights and independence as a sovereign nation. As a child, Le Ly was recruited as a spy and saboteur. By juggling back and forth from her childhood in the 60s to the time she returns from the U.S. to reunite with her family in Vietnam, the author shares her horrid war stories. These are stories that include starvation, rape, torture, imprisonment, and how her family and neighbors endured the brutal war years to survive.

In the prologue and her dedication to peace Phung Le Ly Hayslip states: "Some people suffer in peace the way others suffer in war. The special gift of that suffering, I have learned, is how to be strong while we are weak, how to be brave when we are afraid, how to be wise in the midst of confusion, and how to let go of that which we can no longer hold. In this way, anger can teach forgiveness, hate can teach us love, and war can teach us peace."

Having visited Vietnam in 2019, reading this memoir reminded me of the sights I saw and what I learned about the Vietnam War, especially the tunnels and traps the Viet Cong used, the effects of Agent Orange and chemical warfare on suffering civilian victims, the problems Vietnam had to face after liberation such as defoliated forests and croplands, and detecting and defusing old mines and bombs on the ground. In spite of those gruesome details the author shares, though, what stands out most is Le Ly's belief in the importance of family, her culture, and ancestors.

The author does a splendid job of revealing to the reader the horrors of war and how the untold casualties of any war are inevitably not just those who serve in combat, but the millions of innocent people whose lives are forever uprooted and irrevocably altered by the hell on earth that is war. She shows clearly how war is very much like a terrible disease which devours the humanity from its participants and shows no mercy to any innocent which has the misfortune to end up in its path. Through the vividness of her memories and her strength in relating them to the world Ms. Hayslip has presented a side of the Vietnamese people which was never understood by American politicians and policy makers. This being that the majority of her people only wanted what every sane person in the world wants - to live in peace.
This story of her life reveals the confusion and strife that she and millions of her countrymen were confronted with daily for years. Her explicit accounts of torture and worse by the combatants from both sides of the conflict make it abundantly clear the untenable position which her and millions of her countrymen found themselves in during this conflict. They really did not care about the political doctrine of those who sought to rule their country, most wanted only to work their land, watch over their ancestors and care for their families. They had no interest in choosing sides in the conflict, but the war which seemingly took on a persona of its own would not afford them the luxury of neutrality. The scene where her father tells her “not to hate Chin, but to hate the war” to me clearly spells this feeling of helplessness and futility that surely millions of Vietnamese peasants must have felt.
For millions of others dedicated to the cause of an independent Vietnam, the Americans were seen as yet just another in a long line of foreigner invaders that had come to their land to oppress and rule over them. With patience, determination and tenacity they would over the American's overwhelming military firepower and persevere eventually in becoming a free and sovereign people. It is again in a conversation with her father where she learns of the centuries of strife and war which have plagued her country.
From her perspective, the depiction of the Americans serving in her country was no doubt very realistic. There can be no doubt that there were indeed thousands of American GI's, who thought and acted exactly as she described. The scenes of violence perpetrated on Vietnamese females by American soldiers are yet another example of the way in which the disease of war eats away at the humanity of those involved in it. One should take into account though that these men were in many cases not far removed from a time when their greatest concern may have been their English grades or getting a date for their high school prom. Many were not much more than boys who had been thrown in a scene from hell which they sought only to erase from their memories with booze, drugs and women during their reprieves from humping the bush.
To me the greatest strength of this book is its frankness in revealing the horrific deeds which men, and women for that matter, can perpetrate upon each other in what they perceive as doing their duty. The vivid account of the torture which Hayslip, members of her family and other village residents endured at the hands of soldiers from both sides are a glaring example of how war eats away the humanity of those involved, like a cancer spreading and devouring the tissue of an afflicted patient, allowing them to commit horrible atrocities in the name of their cause. Scenes like this, which could be drawn from any armed conflict in world history, make it evident that humanity must find a means of settling its differences at the conference table rather than the battlefield before humanity can be thought of as truly civilized. In particular during the incident where Big Mike is attempting to cajole her into prostituting herself to the two short-timers, where she thinks to herself, “what can they do to me that hasn’t already been done”, shows precisely how one’s values and sense of self-worth are degraded by the evilness of perpetual violence.
I did run across one review of this book by James Chaffee on Amazon.com. He claims to have first hand knowledge of the places and events depicted, by way having served in this area during the time frame in which the story is set as a US Navy corpsman. In his review he refutes much of what she talks about, particularly in reference to her tales of working in strip clubs and the presence of military personnel working at civilian hospitals in Vietnam. According to his account these events are purely works of fiction, possibly added by the author to spice up what might have otherwise been a rather drab tale. Specifically he claims that Da Nang city was off limits to military personnel during this time, that it was impossible for her to have traveled from Da Nang to the Marble Mountains at night, because she would have had to cross a large river, the bridges over which were heavily guarded and civilians forbidden from crossing at night among others. He felt in essence that this account was so filled with fabrication that Hayslip's credibility is certainly questionable. He also alludes to the fact that much of this section of the book paints all Americans who served in Vietnam in an unsavory light and this is why it was included.
Without further research it is difficult to say which version is the truth, but this does bring up what I see as the only real weakness in this account, that the facts as presented are not backed up with sound documentation. Perhaps the author and/or her co-writer have taken a certain degree of literary leeway in her accounts of what happened in an effort to spice up the tale. However I feel the author's intent was not to glorify nor vilify either side, but rather to put across the indelible truth that in war there really are no winners, only losers. For what victory can there be in winning any war at the expense of our humanity, is there truly any cause so dear that we must pay for it with our souls?

This was not a sensational book that glorified war, sex, and violence; this was one girl/woman's experience. The atrocities that the Vietnamese people experienced during their century of war (Chinese, French, civil war, American) were unthinkable. The thing that kept me reading was the hope that she would be able to leave the difficulties of her life and get to the United States. When I figured out the theme of the book, I was profoundly moved.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is a poignant read. In recounting her own story growing up during the Vietnam War and how she came to America, Hayslip gives a needed perspective of the war not as an American War but as a Vietnamese conflict of power, privilege, and family. Her family dynamics, their religious traditions and perspective, with her experiences both in Vietnam at the time and on her later return make full her account, concluding one circle of her life.

The book contains an Acknowledgements section, a Prologue, 14 chapters with some subsections and breaks, an Epilogue, an Afterword to the Anchor Books Edition, and an Acknowledgements to the Anchor Book Edition.

I highly recommend the book for Americans who remember or experienced the Vietnam War, those interested or concerned about the impacts of war and who wish to heal beyond it, and those interested in the historical and political legacy of the European/American legacy of the 20th century.

Ly Li alternates from her experiences during the Vietnam War and a return visit in the 1980s to reconnect with her family. This was recommended by Hiep and it is a searing look at what was necessary for her to survive throughout the war. A few things are annoying (how many times does she need to tell us how tiny she is?) but it is a memorable book.

Loved it. Best part for me was seeing how her beliefs and allegiances were not based on rational evaluation of right and wrong, but just accepting what she was exposed to mixed with a sense of survival. I think it applies to the way we think and what we believe, much more often than most of us acknowledge. When a conflict is rooted in culture and hatred, you can't debate your way out of it, or even teach your way out of it once someone's biases have been established. Sad, but almost universally true...

We all know that war is horrible, but it takes a book like this to make us realize just how horrible it is. This is war as experienced by a little girl, and later as a young woman, starting in an obscure farming village outside of Danang. The conflict seesaws through the village day-to-day from one side and then the other starting with the French--the village called them Moroccans, through the Republicans--government soldiers out of Saigon, and through the ubiquitous Viet-Cong to the Americans. Each side used its own unique brand of cruelty and murder to get the upper hand over land and control of people. Of course, the power of the modern American war machines were able to do the most physical damage by far. We also get a good look at why most of the village people were adherents of the VC and why their faith in the Viet-Cong eventually led to victory over the corrupt Saigon puppet government.

Through it all we are reminded repeatedly of the timeless mendacity and corruption of governments in the struggle for domination of peoples and territory. The habit of politicians and generals to lie to the people is bad enough on an average day, but in wartime the use of misinformation is wildly and indiscriminately accelerated. You leave this book with a new understanding of why this war was such an culture-destroying event in both the United States and in Viet-Nam.

The author does a marvelous job leading us through the complex Vietnamese peasant culture and Buddhist customs, by itself a fascinating tapestry, and she immerses us in the incredible difficulties of survival of people who are caught in this conflict with no battlelines. Her personal perseverance and tenacity kept her alive until she managed to marry an American and make her way to the United States.

This book is graphic and disturbing, and though it drags a bit in spots, it is well-worth the reading effort, as it fills in the serious gaps in our understanding of that awful watershed event, The War in Vietnam. Please accept this recommendation from one who has been there.

It is always the regular people trying to make a living and feed their families and live their own lives who suffer the most in war. They couldn't care less about socialism or capitalism or communism or any other form of government. They just want a good government that supports them and helps them to live their lives in peace.