Finding Peace & Letting Go

As the final chapters of the book draw to a close, Le Ly and her niece are making a farewell dinner for Le Ly before she leaves.  Ba unexpectedly shows up at the dinner.  Hayslip is in disbelief and immediately thanks her mother for arranging the visit.  Her mother used a didactic message to teach Le Ly a lesson.  Her mother said, "It seemed like the right thing to do, Bay Ly. I got to thinnking about it last night. I asked myself, 'What good does it do to teach Bay Ly about charity and forgiveness if you've forgotten those things yourself?' What an old hen I've become, feuding with my number-two daughter while my own life dribbles away--water from a leaky cold jug! And what was I teaching Ba in the process, eh? How to hold a grudge?"  Her mother teaches her to look out for other people and have an open mind about all cultures and people.  In response to this lesson, Le Ly Hayslip set up the East Meets West Foundation focuses on making Vietnam a better place.  You can access the foundations website at http://www.eastmeetswest.org/.

Finding a Family

After quitting her hospital job, Le Ly soon found work as a waitress.  Through this job, she came into contact with a man named Jim.  Le Ly shows that the war and her experiences have truely humbled her when she expresses, "I had learned, if nothing else, that a "regular life"-one with work and wages and self-respect-if not very glamorous, was for me."  Jim says he has been looking for a woman that would take care of him in the city and he had found Le Ly.  Though they live happily together, Le Ly cannot get over the emotional insecurities that she developed with Red.  She would often have a dream where Jim would disregard Le Ly's option and continue to drive a jeep at an extremely fast pace.  One night, after Jim had been drinking, he came into their room and physically assaulted Le Ly.  She told somebody about it the next day, and he was promptly relocated away from Le Ly.  The reader can connect with Hayslip because everybody has made the same mistake twice.  They can think back to the time when they feel extremely foolish for messing up when just a short time before they had done the same thing.  She uses a metaphor in this chapter that compares respecting people to sowing crops.  She means to convey the message that people get kindness in return for kindness and karma punishes those who are mean people.  

Almost in Paradise

Le Ly begins her new job at the hospital in Danang at the beginning of this chapter.  She loves the people that work with her and the sense of satisfaction she gets from helping people.  After her first day of work, Hayslip says, "As good as I felt about being able to support my mother and son through honest wages, I felt even better about doing so in a way that helped other people and hurt no one in the process."  However, her feelings quickly change when one of the administrators takes an interest in Hayslip.  One of her work friends, Red, was able to have her moved to a different part of the hospital.  Red and Le Ly began to develop a bond through which Red was able to have influence over Le Ly.  After she was pressured by Red into quitting her hospital job and being a dancer at a night club, she rejected this idea and severed the relationship they had.  Le Ly was once again hurt by somebody she thought she could trust.  Their relationship ended in an argument in which Red called Le Ly many hurtful names.  She is now glad she got out of the relationship that Red exploited for his own good.  Amanda Grahn presents a good point that many people feel the same way about the war today in Iraq. 

Power of Earth

In chapter ten, Le Ly decides to leave Vietnam and go for America.  She begins earning money with the help of Big Mike pleasuring soldiers.  Hayslip is ashamed of what she does to make money, but reasons it is for the greater good.  She soon takes a job in Danang as a hospital worker.  The story then skips to her adult life.  After a reunion with her mother, Le Ly goes to a meeting that is taking place to find how the Vietnamese-Americans feel about Vietnam.  When asked about the feelings, Hayslip responded with an anecdote.  "Most of them are still hurt and angry. They are ho khong chap nhan che do cong san-they cannot accept their country under communism. Not everyone who served in the army or the government or worked for the Americans was corrupt. Many were and still are fine patriots who will always love their country. Most of them have relatives in Vietnam whom they're worried about. In '75, remember, even the honest ones lost everything. Because of this, they seldom smile. It's hard for them to start over-to make the most of American life. Even now, they refer to liberation, your chao mung victory holiday, as mat nuoc [the day we lost the country] - a day of mourning and resentment. And that's how many of them act: like children who are still grieving for lost parents."  I agree with Emily Cook that this showed the Vietnamese-Americans still have and maintained throughout the war a strong connection to the homeland and the feelings of the war were still present.  The reader is able to connect with the author because of her once again almost pathetic ways of raising money.  Readers also feel sympathetic towards the Vietnamese people who miss their old Vietnam and want to just return to the old way of living.

Daughters and Sons

The aunt of Le Ly was working the fields one day when she and her son were gunned down by Americans.  Le Ly took care of her aunt, but one day when she arrived for a visit, the house was messed up and her aunt, being paralyzed from the shooting, was on the floor.  She helped her aunt up, but she died soon after.  The village was filled with people with similar stories, once a member of a wealthy family but now has been reduced to a poor beggar.  Hayslip now goes into her adult life, when she is reunited with her mother.  She begins at the agency in charge of returning Vietnamese people.  She asks the clerk if it would be possible to schedule a meeting with her mother, to which the clerk does not give positive feedback.  When she gets back to her niece's home, her mother is already there.  She greets her daughter, and begins to reminisce about her son, Bon Nghe.  She was proud of him for going to school and becoming a soldier.  She was only one negative thing to say about her son: his wife is not great.  Hayslip's mother does not hate his wife, but she gives half-hearted compliments and seems not to like her because of the relationship with the North.  Her mother then moves onto Lan, who also has started a life in California. Her mothers appears to view Lan as a rebel and is not crazy about the way she has led her life.  Then they begin to talk about Ba.  Her original husband returned after the war only to find she had remarried.  "Well, that's where she'll stay as far as the family's concerned- all alone and forgotten- until she changes her ways."  Her mother became bitter about Ba keeping gifts meant for the whole family, and thus isolated her.  Her mother then makes a comment very out of the ordinary about Sau Ban.  She tells of a snake that follows her into the house.  For many reasons, their mother thinks the snake contains his spirt, so she is able to put him to rest properly, instead of the way he had gone.  Hayslip's brother, Bon Nghe then arrives at the home, claiming he couldn't miss the reunion.  A small argument breaks out when he refuses to eat a chocolate that is offered by Le Ly, but in the interest of peace and harmony, their mother lets it go.  Le Ly and Bon Nghe then talk a bit about writing books.  They both want to tell the story of their family.  The dialogue in this chapter reveals the family dynamic.  They seem to be a typical family, arguments and love among other things.  They are determined to stick together and watch out for each other.  Failure to stay honest with the family resulted in the insolation of Ba.  The reader is easily able to connect with the family members by thinking about their own family reunions.

Sisters and Brothers

The reader finds adult Hayslip in a market, where her niece's son and taking her to see her sister, his grandmother.  Upon saying hello to Hai, Hayslip is greeted with coldness and is told to go back to her niece's house and wait.  she does as she is directed, and soon Hai arrives at the house.  Hayslip is told that it is not very safe to be seen talking to an American, but now her sister seems eager to know about her life.  Hayslip explains how they call Hung Jimmy in the States.  The story goes back to the time after her father's funeral, which she spent close to hr home.  She realizes the Viet Cong have become stronger in their ability to penetrate that bases of the Americans.  She also becomes aware of the common practice of sex trade in the area.  Girls are often offered jobs immediately of a bus and are tricked into being sex slaves of their new masters.  Prostitution was a effective good way to make a living as well.  Some hookers had a madam who organized the girls and protected them.  The madams were sometimes ranked highly, were able to influence the police to look the other way or even help their business.  The prostitutes risked getting diseases and being the subject of violence.  Their were also people who would commit a crime for institutions.  The death count was sometimes reduced so the government could avoid giving out pensions.  This infuriated Le Ly because the government was stealing from the mouths of the dependents.  The story now goes forward again.  Hayslip is eager to see her brother again.  Her family has warned her that he is a different man from the person he was when she last saw him.  When he arrives, he greets her like a distant relative.  The reader can immediately sense a change in tone of the author from excitement to heartbreak.  "He uses the ceremonial form of greeting- one reserved for distant relatives - rather than the familiar em bay for number-six sister.  It almost breaks my heart.  Before this greeting, I thought about throwing myself in his arms."  He asks probing questions, like a policeman rather than a brother.  He eventually relaxes a bit, but still seems cautions of this American.  Le Ly leaves the house soon afterwards for her hotel room.  She now thinks about her mother, hoping that she will be able to see her before she has to go back.  The reader is reminded of a time in their life when they experienced disappointment.  It is easy to connect and sympathize with somebody that has had that same emotion.

A Different View

After Le Ly had bought her own house, she decides to go visit her father in Ky La.  She is overwhelmed to find the village has been nearly destroyed by the war and that her father is in a deathly state.  He tells of the enemies torturing him after they found his bunkers.  Le Ly sets out to find the soldiers that are required to give her father attention, but a translator tells her to leave because they won't help her.  After looking around the village and finding many people she knew as a child had grown up and moved away.  She went to the hill where her father took her as a child, but this time it was a bleak picture of the land that was destroyed by the war.  The author uses pathos to make the reader connect with the world in the book through pity.  "Of those villagers who remained in Ky La, many were disfigured from the war, suffering amputated limbs, jagged scars, or the diseases that followed malnutrition or took over a body no longer inhabited by a happy human spirit."  Le Ly goes to her father and begins to speak angrily about the war.  Her father tells her that she needs to fight the battle of raising a good son.  Awhile after Le Ly returns to her house in Danang, she receives news that says her father has killed himself.  The story flashes forward to the present, when Le Ly is reunited with her niece, Tinh.  Tinh tells of what the new government has done to their family.  The streets of Hayslip's previous home has become overpopulated and the streets are crowded yet they have no cars.  She realizes that she has to negotiate the price of a car or house, while these people had to trade from meal to meal.  She then thinks back to her fathers funeral.  They had to get special permission to gather in large numbers.  She discussed the process of his funeral and the mourning process the family went through.  Her fathers death again allows the reader to connect with the family through a death in their family and thinking back to their mourning process.