Will I love When Heaven and Earth Changed Places?

This memoir by Le Ly Hayslip profoundly impacted me with its raw and heartfelt narrative of survival and resilience. The personal account of her experiences during and after the Vietnam War highlights the intergenerational trauma and the journey of healing.

Her courage and strength are incredibly inspiring, making it a must-read for understanding the human aspects of war and its long-lasting effects on families.

Le Li Hayslip’s wrenching memoir traces the arc of the Vietnam War as she experienced it, first as a 12-year-old, then through her teens and twenties, and finally as an American returning to her homeland.

Her tranquil childhood in a rural village explodes into smithereens with the arrival of American troops, followed by warring between the trifecta of government, Viet Cong, and the US military. This being war, children and civilians were viewed as battleground assets and recruited as spies, agitators, and saboteurs.

Le Li was one of the recruits and suffered every imaginable horror of war except death. Her… show more.

A memoir from the perspective of the other side, this book tells the story of a young girl in Central Vietnam who was recruited into the war and, by her teens, had suffered near-starvation, torture, imprisonment, and more, in addition to losing much of her family. Later she married an American and moved to this country, but since 1986, she has helped rebuild her homeland through the charitable organizations she established. 

Born Phùng Thị Lệ Lý, in a small village south of Da Nang, Le Ly presents a new and emerging view of the American War in Vietnam. This emerging literature attempts to expand the boundaries of the war in Vietnam to include the Vietnamese people and a culture that existed for thousands of years. The overwhelming amount of literature about the war in Vietnam has been written by Americans, and not surprisingly, by American veterans who mainly have written about their personal experiences. Le Ly Hayslip writes about her experiences at the hands of the South Vietnamese government, her rape… show more.