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.

A Question of Faith

Hayslip finds herself in the middle of a meeting for Vietnamese people who are returning to Vietnam.  They are told they must declare any gift and money exchange.  Basically, if they keep the agency informed, they will be fine.  After the meeting, Anh and Hayslip take a flight to Danang to eventually be reunited with her home village of Ky La, at which point she goes back to her past.  She remembers the lies her mother would tell people to explain the pregnant girl.  Whle her mother talks to a woman about a job, she takes a walk and thinks about her father.  Her father has also become the laughing stock of the village.  He was mocked for having a daughter, Lan, who was dating American men.  He became ill and tried (unsuccessfully) to kill himself because he didn't want to live without his family.  Le Ly found herself wandering around an alley, and she was nearly raped again.  She soon was looking for yet another place to sleep, so she tried her sister.  Le Ly's mother convinced Lan to let Le Ly sleep in a corner on the kitchen floor.  When Le Ly told Lan the truth, Lan was disgusted and called her many foul names.  Le Ly was made to wait on guests at parties Lan would host.  Hayslip never thought these people were classy enough for Lan, especially her boyfriends.  Her boyfriend's would often come into the apartment, unable to communicate with Le Ly at all due to the language barrier, and wait for Lan to return.  Because she had not been particularly welcoming to one suitor, Lan kicked Le Ly out and left her to fight for herself.  She found refuge with another pregnant women for a few days, but soon returned to her sister's, where she found out her father has paid them a visit.  He had said they should take Le Ly back in, because that is what family does.  He also says he never wants to see Le Ly again.  Their father came to visit again after awhile, but this time Ba was at the house and Le Ly was told to hide in the closet.  Her father said he missed her and wanted to see her again.  That night, Le Ly's water broke and her mother took her to a birthing clinic.  She gave birth to a boy, Hung, and after three weeks in the physician's office, Le Ly was taken home.  This was a turning point in her life, and she began to move towards independence.  Her father stopped in to see the baby, but did not see Le Ly as Ba had forbade it.  She moved in with her cousins, where she learned the trade of the black market.  Le Ly would sell American goods, such as cigarettes and whiskey, to locals.  After a few weeks with some girls, they were selling their goods back to Americans that would pay top dollar.  "After a few months in this business, I was able to save enough money to ask cousin Nu (who needed a housekeeper more than another black marketeer) to find a house for me, my mother, and son."  In another example of her independence, she asks to buy a house for her and her close family.  Before the move, she is introduced to the product of marijuana, which is supposed to be able to fetch a high price and the military bases.  She was arrested on her way back from a sell, but was let off because her marijuana was actually fake.  The sellers began to see which Americans were trustworthy customers and which ones would simply arrest them and take their money and products.  The story returns to her adult life, where she is arriving in Danang.  The airport is rundown and not nearly what it was during the American War.  After making their way to the hotel, Anh goes to tell her family that Le Ly has arrived.  Le Ly lays in bed and wonders what her family will be like.  Will they be amazed by the wealth and good living she has found in America?  Will they be disgusted that she left the land of her ancestors?  She decided resting is the only way to get rid of those fears.

Losing Love

In the fifth chapter, Hayslip goes through many stories, as her life as an adult is the main story, and the tale of her childhood is a frame device.  The chapter begins with the cab driver admitting he is lost, not intending to hurt her, and they soon find a young boy who claims to be Anh's son.  As the boy directs the driver to his home, Hayslip has a flashback to her final days in Anh's house.  Soon after Anh and Hayslip had sex, she begins feeling sick, and later discovers she has become pregnant with his child.  After multiple attempts to abort the baby, she begins to show and the woman of the house is (correctly) convinced the child is Anh's.  The wife kicks her out of the house, despite Hayslip and her mother begging for a job.  Anh says he will buy a house in a distant village and let them live there until the baby is born.  Le Ly's mother has become bitter toward her daughter and concerned they will not be able to find her a husband.  In return, Hayslip began to have negative thoughts about her mother.  "For the first time in my life, I wished my mother was somewhere else- or even dead.  It was a horrible thought- I'd never had it before- but it gripped me now as strongly as the living thing inside my belly.  True, she stood by me, caring for the sick animal no one else wanted, but somehow that wasn't enough."  The story then returns to the adult era, Anh explains that since the years since Hayslip was fired, he divorced his wife and turned his business over to the communist government.  While this continued to make him money, he was no longer considered wealthy, and moved into his girlfriend's house, whom he married.  They both realize there is no longer a romantic spark between them, and he brings her back to the hotel to talk.  Hayslip figures she has more of a sibling relationship than a remotely romantic one.  She thinks back to her close relationship with her brother.  She and her brother, Sau Ban, shared a close relationship in which Sau ban would often spoil his little sister.  When he was called away from the family through his job his parents began to argue their father became sick, prompting Le Ly to try to get the family to come together.  Sau Ban came for a visit, but his presence made their parents miss the other girls more.  When Sau Ban became old enough to be entered into the army, he moved back to Ky La in an attempt to escape being drafted.  Unfortunately, the Republicans had moved into the village recently and began to persuade Sau Ban.  The family tried to sneak him out and to get the Viet Cong to accept him.  Both attempts were unsuccessful, and they turned their attention to getting Sau Ban married and hopefully plant the seed of their family.  He was soon married, but left his bride at Ky La while he went with his sister to the city.  They soon received a letter that indirectly said Sau had been taken in by the Viet Cong.      Later, the family got a reading from a physic that said the boy was likely dead.  After they had confirmed his death through the physic, the bride left and they built him an alter.  The story goes back to the adult life, where Le Ly and Anh rehash old memories and explore the life of their son.  They also go to a meeting that is for former Vietnam citizens that are returning to the country.  The book then goes back to the time when Hayslip's sister, Ba, lost her husband.  The husband's cousin began to sexually harass Ba until she gave in.  She invited him to a secluded area, where it is assumed they had sex.  Ba and her father here arrested and taken to an interrogation ward.  They were released a few days later, on the condition the Ba marry the cousin, who was working for the police.  Ba agreed and the two moved to the city because of his job.  This would be the cousin that would lobby for Le Ly's release from prison in the earlier chapters.  I agree with Amanda Grahn that the chapter is remeniscent of the song Coming Home by John Legend.

Losing the Way

Chapter 4 begins with Hayslip explaining when she was thirteen, her father was able to get her engaged.  The plan was to be married in the next three years, but he joined the Viet Cong and was soon reported missing in action.  This was usually the signal that he had been killed, but that could not be verified due to the custom of taking the bodies and burying them quickly.  As Hayslip left the town during her exile, after she had been raped, she thought about what the boy would think if he came back and found his bride had been convicted and exiled.  Her sister was able to find a job for her on the outskirts of their area, and she became a family's housekeeper and babysitter.  The father of the family came onto Hayslip multiple times, and after she escaped from him in a field near the house, her mother came to get her.  After receiving information that her family was in trouble, Hayslip devised a plan to sneak back into the village that had shunned her.  She arrived to learn her family was fine, except they had been outcast by the entire village as well.  She was told her mother was nearly killed, but spared and put under house arrest.  Finally, her father felt dejected enough to declare that Hayslip and her mother would take a plane to Saigon to get away from the awful village.  They board a plane in the middle of the night and fly into Saigon, where Hayslip's view on life changes again.  "I had never experienced in Ky La, something even my wonderful parents- who knew everything about life and duty- could not, for their own heavy burdens, give me: the simple feeling of hope."  Her role as a round character becomes evident when her views of life begin to change in this chapter.  The city of Saigon overwhelms the simple farm girl at first, but they soon become used to it and realize that most city lives are the same as each other.  They soon locate Hayslip's sister Hai, and she reluctantly agrees to let Le Ly stay a few nights.  After Le Ly was no longer able to eat properly, she was taken to a hospital, where they discovered she had an ulcer.  She healed quickly and the befriended the nurse.  The nurse was able to help Le Ly and her mother get a job interview with a wealthy family.  Both were hired and Le Ly immediately developed a crush on the father of the house, Anh.  One night, when Le Ly was left in charge of opening the garage door for her master.  She did as directed, and for some reason her boss kisses her romantically.  Later that night Anh came into her room and they proceeded to have sex.  Meanwhile, Le Ly makes it back into Saigon as an adult.  She is extremely underwhelmed by the status of this city compared to San Diego.  She is jumpy and suspicious of almost everything, but she makes it to her hotel with no problems.  It is revealed that she is searching for Anh in the city.   She gets into a taxi-like bike and they soon ride into a rough part of the city, at which point the man turns into a blind alley and pulls to a stop.  The development of the character is fun to watch and exciting to feel a part of.  The chapters have become an exciting and suspenseful ride that follows the path a young girl follows to make her way in the world.

Open Wounds

In the third chapter of When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, the main character, Le Ly Hayslip, begins to change.  The occupation of the village by both the Viet Cong and the Republicans continues.  Le Ly gets arrested because she is (correctly) suspected by the Republicans of signaling to the Viet Cong that their army was moving into the area.  After a very short time spent in the jail, Hayslip's brother-in-law again comes to get her out.  When she returns to her village, she is treated like a hero for spoiling the enemy's plans and she even had a song dedicated to her.  Conflict ensued in the village and a nearby village, and Hayslip and a friend were arrested for being caught hiding in a trench during an exchange of gunfire.  The soldier recognized Hayslip from an earlier incident, and decided to send both girl to My Thi, a torture camp run by the army.  Hayslip was interrogated severely at the camp and tortured through the use of electrical wires, ants, and water snakes.  After only three days in the Vietnamese equivalent of Alcatraz, Hayslip's mother was able to negotiate her freedom.  The deal was only able to go through because a relative of their family was in the army.  But upon her return to her home, she found that many people had written her off as a traitor.  She was unable to tell why she was let out of the prison so quickly because the family would lose even more by letting the Viet Cong know they had blood in the Republicans.  The role of the limited narrator is clearly felt by the emotional swings of the chapter.  The reader feels the highs of the party when Hayslip is a hero, but immediately feels isolated and alone when she is treated like scum by her own people.  "As soon as we entered the village, I could tell everything had changed.  People- even old neighbors- avoided my glance, then stared at me as I passed.  That night, the Viet Cong held a rally, but the messenger didn't come to out house."  The reader feels the isolation of Hayslip immediately, and becomes fruserated with Hayslip as she tried to show the village that she didn't tell the prison anything.  In an attempt to win the acceptance of her village back, Hayslip planned to go work in the fields early in the morning.  But by going to the fields, she inadvertantly led the Republicans on a Viet Cong ambush, which was quickly broken up.  This severed all relationships with the Viet Cong.  She was taken to a trial that night and sentenced to death.  Two men took her to her future grave, but they raped her instead of killing her.  This killed her spirit however, and she now wished that the had been killed.  She had no side to fight for, and nothing to believe in.  The reader is taken along on this "roller coaster ride" of emotions with the little innocent girl experiences being arrested, tortured, honored, arrested again, saved, disgraces, sentenced to death, wishing she had actually been put to death, and the absence of the fight that once made the reader fall in love with this child's story.

Fathers and Daughters

In chapter 2 of When Heaven and Earth Changed Places Hayslip begins by discussing her close relationship with her father.  Her father teaches her that her main duty to her family and her country is to stay alive.  Hayslip then describes the dilemma her village faced when the Viet Cong and the Republicans began making frequent visits.  The rebels instructed the villagers to dig them bunkers, and the Republicans would often demand they fill the bunkers back in.  The Viet Cong were able to gain control of the village, and the children were recruited to do special things for the rebellion.  They were instructed to steal the weapons of the Republican soldiers that slept in their house.  The innocence established in the previous chapter was maintained, even through the high tensions situations with the Viet Cong.  "For us, the new war was a game for earning medals and an honored place on lists- ideas we had been taught for years in the government's own school."  Again, the reader connects with Hayslip through her lovable childhood innocence.  This connection is strengthened when the innocent child is captured by the Republicans and kept in a cage while periodically being interrogated and beaten until her mother is able to negotiate her freedom.  At the end of the chapter, as well as in the first chapter, the story skips to after the war.  Though the country still faces political instability, Hayslip, now a grown woman who has lived in America for some time, has planned a return trip to her village.  It is revealed that she is now on a death list by the Viet Cong and is not popular with the Vietnamese government because she is writing a book about her experiences.

Coming Back

In When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Le Ly Hayslip begins by describing the hardships the people of her village in Vietnam had to endure.  "Some of the dead, mostly older people, had been privileged to die in almost natural ways: of starvation, of drowning in a river while fleeing a battle, of exposure while sleeping unprotected in the fields, of failed hearts and tired souls worn out by too much trying.  But most were killed by weapons wielded by the French and their Vietnamese allies."  She uses these often tragic examples of daily life to set the mood of a society where many people had to live in fear of things, such as the military, the Americans, the French, starvation, ghosts, and the threat of family members being taken away.  She explains her special bond she had with her mother that was established because she is the youngest child.  Her mother tells her stories and gives her advice about how to live.  Strong to ties to a families ancestors were present in this community, and rituals were performed commonly to honor their memory.  Hayslip tells the stories of her past as she thought of them as they were happening, as a child.  The author's account of the events are easy to connect with and understand because they are told through the eyes of a young and innocent Vietnamese girl.  Readers can connect with Hayslip by thinking of their childhood and of their innocence at the time.  She takes a major event in Vietnam and eventually America and shows how the children saw the actions of the authorities, parents, and soldiers.  Hayslip does a good job of making a connection with the reader and making her accounts of the past easy to understand and interesting to follow.