When Heaven and Earth Changed Places

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Recommended: The vietynam war and its impact on american society

Book Review: When Heaven and Earth Changed Places

Le Ly Hayslip was born in Ky La Vietnam in December 1949. She was the sixth child of a farming family. Their village supported the Viet Cong and as she was growing up she was often required to help Viet Cong soldiers by stealing supplies. Hayslip's life was full of more hardship and difficulty than most American's can imagine. Until her early twenties Hayslip's life revolved around War, at first with the French and later with the Americans. The Vietnam War shaped her life and that of her family's very strongly. From her earliest remembrances war distinctly affected the way her family lived and the life altering choices she had to make.

Her life started off in a dramatic state and continued that way throughout her life as portrayed in this text. She was born small and the midwife wanted to kill her at birth. Only her mother's love kept her alive. She was shunned by her family until they knew that she would survive because they did not want to grow attached to a child they would soon have to bury. She grew up more spoiled than her siblings because not only was she the youngest but most of them ended up leaving home while she was still young. For many years Hayslip, as a child, thought that the warplanes and bombs were dragons in the heavens. She states that once her delusion was eliminated she wished she could revert back to her younger self because it was less terrifying to think that dragons were attacking that to think that other humans were hurting them. The Viet Cong often used Hayslip and other village children to sabotage American soldiers. They were instructed to steal what ever they could from the Americans staying in their homes and were taught that the risk of per...

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... remembering her past as she experiences the present and therefore, an understanding of how the present came to be is more clear to the reader.

This novel offers an intriguing viewpoint that is not often explored when discussing a war. Le Ly Hayslip, through her account, allows readers to experience the Viet Nam War from a Vietnamese point of view. And not only to we get the unique view of a Vietnamese person but she is also a woman, and that in itself crosses many barriers. Most war accounts come from men that fought in a particular war; however, Le Ly was a civilian woman. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places shows, through her memories, how she struggled to survive and find peace, in spite of the tragic events that surrounded her. She is a strong woman and her strives to help her country have made drastic changes in the quality of life for many Vietnamese.

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