Rating: 
Summary: A Wonderful Read and a Memorable Story
Review: I recently read Hayslip's When Heaven and Earth Changed Places for an Asian American Literature class I am taking. I have to say that I was overwhelmed by the length of the book, but was amazed at how quickly I read it. Never before have I felt so touched by a character, particularly her strengths and her courageous sense of self. I believe that if you are looking for something to inspire you, while becoming thoroughly enmeshed in something literary, this would be a wise choice. Her work is well - written and there was never a dull moment in which I would have considered putting this book down. Her images of the Vietnam War are truly vivid and therefore horrifying because she portrays each of her characters as if that character were the only one. Her attention to detail is incredible, and this point alone makes this autobiography truly memorable.
Rating:
Summary: Amazingly Painful and Hopeful Story
Review: I think it will always be difficult to nail down the myriad of reactions people have towards the Vietnam War. This book helps to bring another side to light...the war took place in the narrator's backyard. As she talks about playing both sides towards the middle, the reader learns about how she struggles as an adult to fully comprehend what her role was and is toward her native land. The book will make you grit your teeth, turn your head, want to cry and yet yearn for understanding about how this all happened.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful, Touching, and Informative Read
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed Le Ly Hayslip's account of her Vietnam War experience. Hayslip presents her story in a way that does not invoke sympathy from the reader; the story instead represents a call for action from the reader. Hayslip story is the heroic journey of a Vietnamese girl, and she effectively presents the numerous dimensions of the war in ways that relate to both Americans and Vietnamese Americans. I recommend Hayslip's novel to anyone wishing to learn more about this war and specifically any student of American history or culture. This story has the ability to bridge the gaps opened by the Vietnam War that have yet to be closed.
Rating: 
Summary: A communist trying to make an extra buck of the U.S.
Review: I thought this book was a great read and that it went by very fast due to the nature that it was written in, as a flashback narrative to suggest that memory functions as a patchwork of quilt of thoughts that are discontinuous and not linear. I am an Asian American Studies major at UCI and read this book several times in my Asian Am. classes. As a "Viet Kieu" who left war-torn Vietnam as a young child to immigrate to the U.S. due to the Communist rule, Le Ly Hayslip represents a traitor and a money hungry Communist who helped to destroy Vietnam. She may be claiming to want to put the past aside and not to take sides, and to forgive those who wrong her, but she still is a COMMUNIST who sides with the Viet Cong and is benefiting from the capitalist U.S. If you read her second book, Child of War, Woman of Peace, she dares to compare the evil Ho Chi Minh to President Abraham Lincoln. She claims to not know anything about communism even though her and her family helped the Viet Cong in the Vietnam War. She compares American men to dogs and to children who grew up without mothers, yet her countless flings are with white American men and the fathers of her two of her three boys are two different white men.
She is a woman of loose morals and uses people to her advantage to get what she wants. She comes to America and uses the system to become a millionaire, while ignoring her family who are struggling to survive back home in Vietnam. They no not have enough to eat and need medical attention and she admits to being a bad daughter and sister by ignoring her family in Vietnam. I believe a lot of her stories are fabricated to lure a wider audience, and to not isolate and insult her adopting country by outright sympathizing with the Communists. She just wants to make the book seem sensational and appealing so that she can make a large profit in entertaining people with her lies. I am not saying that things like these did not happen to people in the war, it just seems so credulous to me that she can pretend to be neutral while there is a undertone of sympathizing with the Viet Congs and hating the Americans. She makes herself to be a victim while in fact she created and got herself in a lot of these situations.
It makes me angry to see these hypocritical communists who claim to want equality for all, benefit and become rich from the sufferings of others. The Viet Congs lied, tortured, and killed numerous innocent people to get what they want. Many of my family members were killed and tortured in the Vietnam War by people like her. I myself left Vietnam as a boat person and saw people on the boat die of dehydration, get robbed and raped by Thai pirates. The Viet Congs made life so miserable that many were willing to die trying to leave Vietnam than to stay and live in a Communist country. They claim to want to make Vietnam independent and free, but look at how Vietnam is today. It is even worse off than before the war with many dying because of poverty, mal-nutrition, and illnesses and diseases.
Le LY is ostracized in the Vietnamese Community in the U.S. and was booed and driven out of UCI went she went there to be a guest speaker. She is shunned by the Viet Kieu in the U.S. for sympathizing with the Viet Congs and aiding them during the war. She may pretend and hide behind her facade of claiming to be a pretty and poor village girl who knows nothing, she uses this to her advantage to gain sympathy from her readers, She knows exactly what she is doing by luring readers into her stories. It's pathetic how low she would go to make a buck off the same capitalist system that she and the communists despised do much that they had to engage in a war that turned many people's lives upside down, to drive the Americans out. It's also ironic how she and the communists now seek aid from the very people that they were fighting against not so long ago.
Rating:
Summary: A piece of biography interweaved with lots of fiction
Review: I visited the village of Binh Ky (Ky La) in mid 1969 while escorting a road sweep with members of Golf Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment. I was about to leave country, having served 18 months on an extended tour with the Navy Hospital at the Marble Mountains, NSA Station Hospital. I am very familiar with this area. Though I don't doubt that Hayslip may be from Binh Ky (I have been back and seen her family tomb in the dirt poor hamlet), I do know that a good deal of what she tells in this book is pure fiction. 1. Da Nang City was off limits to U. S. personnel from mid-1966 until the U. S. pulled out. There were no clubs to go to, no strip joints. All clubs were on bases. No one walked on the streets or lived in apartments in Da Nang. Those who worked there were transported there from their bases. All her stories about working in strip clubs frequented by Americans in Da Nang or meeting GIs prowling the streets are lies. 2. There were no U. S. personnel working at the civilian hospital in downtown Da Nang, as she claimed her lover Red did. I know, as I went to that hospital numerous times carrying wounded or sick Vietnamese civilians in our ambulances, and I toured the hospital several times. It was mostly open bay buildings with two or three to a bed, the families moving in beside the patients to cook for them while farm animals wandered around the facilities. Red is a purely fictitious character. As I stated earlier, no U. S. military personnel lived in apartments in Da Nang. There were some compounds where Americans lived, but they were guarded by Chinese mercenaries or other non-Vietnamese troops and you wouldn't just walk up and knock on the door of one of them. In her later book, Child of War, Woman of Peace, this facility becomes a Navy hospital in Da Nang. I was at the only Naval hospital in the entire I Corps, and it was at the Marble Mountains, not in Da Nang. There were barracks there, not apartments, and civilians were not allowed to visit them. And there was no Vietnamese guard at the "front door" or anywhere else on this compound. It was guarded by American Marines. This whole episode is pure fiction. 3. Hayslip claims to have traveled from Da Nang to the Marble Mountains twice, on foot, at night. This is not likely, given that the only way to get there involves crossing a river, the Song Han. The two bridges across the Han were guarded by Americans and no civilians crossed at night. There was a curfew in Da Nang. Boat travel was subject to artillery fire, monitored from the top of what called the Crow's nest, one of the Marble Mountains facing Binh Ky. 4. She claims her sister had an apartment at the Marble Mountains where Americans visited. I have film footage and still shots of this area and there are no apartments there, let alone one with a common indoor bathroom as she claims. In fact, the houses were all one story structures, almost exclusively shacks. This is another pernicious lie in which she paints an unflattering picture of Americans. It is not clear why she has added so much fiction to this account, but my guess is that otherwise it would be very dull. All of the nonsense she has added is very disparaging to Americans, which could also be a reason for their addition. These lies make me wonder how much of the rest of her tale is true. Her credibility is low for me. I corresponded with her briefly on the internet, but after I asked her to tell me how she got from Da Nang to the Marble Mountains by foot she stopped responding. Nonetheless, it is a great read, but must be taken with a very healthy grain of salt.
Rating:
Summary: This was best book I ever readed
Review: I was just kidding, i thinked that this book was soo stupid. It made my cry because I am a big cry baby, wah, wah, wah. Don't read it.
Rating:
Summary: A 'must read' book about an amazing woman
Review: I'd been home from the Vietnam War for 20 years when I first read Le Ly's book. What a refreshly new, yet painful view of the war that we Americans only saw from one side. This book changed my life! The 1999 epilogue to this story would tell readers that Le Ly Hayslip is the genuine article -- a truly amazing woman, who against all odds, and at risk to her personal finances and safety, brought humanitarian relief to Vietnam in the form of medicines, doctors, dentists, volunteers, medical clinics and an orphanage. She has also helped many GI's reconcile their feelings about the war by speaking to groups about the war, and making veterans part of her relief efforts to one of the poorest nations on Earth. Le Ly's humanitarian work continues, and her book may just ignite that spark in your heart as well. My life is all the better for personally getting to know Le Ly. She is one of the truly remarkable women of our time. Nobel Peace Prize? Perhaps.
Rating:
Summary: A MUST READ FOR EVERY WALK OF LIFE
Review: Karl Burns(normanstansfield@yahoo.com) from Glasgow,Scotland , May 22, 1999 A MUST READ FOR EVERY WALK OF LIFE I was fortunate enough to come across this wonderful book purely by chance last year.Miss le ly Hayslip gives a truely heart rending account of her life as a little peasant girl living in war torn vietnam.This book really puts you through an emotional meat grinder at times tearing apart your insides with Le ly's terrifying accounts of her own terrible suffering and that of her family and indeed all those around her leaving you with an awful empty feeling of total sadness and total lack of faith for the human race.Amazingly Despite all her own horrific experience of human ignorance and cruelty she bears no ill will or malice towards her fellow man and through her own incredible courage and strength of spirit,she inevitably leaves us all with a strong sense of hope and her message of compassion and peace. Sadly this terrific book seems to have been largly overlooked which is a great shame as it is a real eye opener and has so much more to say than just your average account of the horrors of war.Its a deeply moving account of one very brave little womans triumph of spirit in the face of total adversity.Anyone with the tiniest shred of compassion will be moved to tears.It Really puts our own little problems and gripes into perspective. One of the most profound and touching books i have ever read.I cannot recommend it enough,please get your hands on it and read it NOW
Rating:
Summary: The power of healing through forgiveness...
Review: Le Ly Hayslip has written a tale of how the human spirit
can endure nonstop misery and, through forgiveness and compassion, can come out on top. A tale to inspire us all
(me included). In many ways, Ms. Hayslip resembles my father,
a man who spent his childhood living through the hell
of Nazi occupied Greece and later the civil war that nearly
destroyed that country. His emigration to the States
and his never ending desire to help others avoid the hell
he went through mirrors Le Ly Hayslips own qualities of
caring and compassion.
A lesson on how we all should, collectively and individually,
think about the consequences of war and violence.
Rating: 
Summary: Thoughtful perspective of a life changed by war
Review: 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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