Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Necessary empathy, September 17, 2003
When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is an extremely important book, particularly for those of us who have grown up and spent our lives in the USA, because it gives us something vital that we lack--the experience of living in a country where war is waged. Our world grows smaller every day, and whatever our government does elsewhere ultimately comes home to roost. This is in part because refugees like Ms. Hayslip, who wash up on our shores, become part of the fabric of our country; both the damage they suffer and the truimph they attain become part of the collective "ours." We can no longer afford to operate without empathy; those we kill are our neighbors, or at the very least, our neighbors' cousins. And so, this book is both important and timely. 'When Heaven and Earth Changed Places' is the autobiography of a woman who survives by wits, guts and sheer endurance the horrors of war and occupation--and, later, the horrors of emmigration to a bizarre new world and marriage to a different kind of war victim. It provides a rare and articulate window into the mind and heart of someone who was made to play, by circumstance, both ally and enemy. It should be mandatory reading for anyone trying to understand the Viet Nam war (or, as the Vietnamese more correctly call it, the American War), but it's far from some dry and bitter medicine that must be consumed with a pinch of the nostrils. It's an exciting story, extremely readable--a tale that is frightening, harrowing and, ultimately, heartening. The movie was decent, but the book is much better. Susan O'Neill, Viet Nam Veteran and author, Don't Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Viet Nam
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Thoughtful perspective of a life changed by war, September 5, 2001
Le Ly Hayslip's first autobiography is fascinating, and also remarkable for offering a rare view of the "American War" from a woman who was once a young conscript with the Viet Cong.I have many friendships with Vietnamese expatriates, and in contrast to Hayslip, they are unambiguous "southerners." Each family has compelling stories to tell of maltreatment, imprisonment, and persecution under the communist system, for real and supposed associations with the former South Vietnamese government. Hayslip's perspective is different from theirs but uniquely compelling in its own way, for she ultimately had enemies on both sides and few friends on either side, even within her own family. She tells of sorrow, torture, failures, hardships and mistakes in such a way that I felt uncomfortably close to her at times. And while she has a genuine awareness of her own humanity and its many challenges, she leaves some difficult personal questions raised but unanswered. Nevertheless, I came away from the book with a much fuller perspective of Vietnamese culture and attitudes before, during, and after the war. Although Hayslip is worth praising for her humanitarian efforts, she is but one of hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese expatriates who continue to support the families they left behind. It's the strangest irony of the war's aftermath that communist Vietnam seeks the assistance of the very people it drove away. The rarely reported legacy of the war is that the Vietnamese people -- including the Viet kieu (overseas Vietnamese) and so-called "northerners" and "southerners" -- continue to struggle with differences that still surface more than 25 years after the fall of Saigon. Hayslip's story shows that regardless of ideology or culture or geography, the war and its aftermath affected most Vietnamese in cruel and unpredictable ways.
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25 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A War That's Not Over, April 4, 2000
"Le Ly Hayslip had always been in-between south and north, east and west, peace and war, Vietnam and America. It has been her life and fate to be in-between Heaven and Earth." When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is a story of a woman from a small village in Vietnam called Ky La. The author, Le Ly Hayslip, is just another victim of the Vietnam War. The brutality of the war created separation in her family, destruction of an individual, and distrust among formerly warm-hearted neighbors. She was born the youngest of six children in a close-knit Buddhist family. Throughout her childhood, the peace breaks into pieces due to the war. Le Ly, as a little girl, serves the Viet Cong fighters, and she is honored for courageously surviving tortures in prison when captured by the government. The book focuses on the individual¡¯s emotional and physical outcomes caused by the war. If one wants to know the reality of what the effects of the war are, this book is definitely recommended. As an Asian, I was attracted to the story of the life of this Vietnamese woman. As I read, I found there was something very extraordinary about her life that stirred my emotions. To the public, this story is well known through the movie, "Heaven and Earth." As the movie was enjoyed by numerous moviegoers, the book will be appreciated by people of all ages, especially those who are interested in the Vietnam War.
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