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from When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Le Ly Hayslip with Jay Wurtz
- University of Hawai'i Press
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Le Ly Hayslip with Jay Wurtz Phùng Thị Lê Lý was born in 1949, in Ky La, a small village near Đà Nẵng. At the age of fifteen she was a hero of the Việt Cộng but suffered a quick fall in fortunes, first arrested and tortured by the South Vietnamese forces, then raped and exiled by the Việt Cộng upon her release. She fled to Đà Nẵng where she worked for the next five years as a live-in maid, black marketeer, hospital attendant, and café hostess. She gave birth to the son of one of her employers, and at the age of nineteen she married the 53-year-old father of her second son in order to emigrate to America. Widowed only a few years later, she married Dennis Hayslip in gratitude for his arranging her sister’s emigration—despite Dennis’ alcoholism , abusiveness, and angry temper. After that relationship worsened and she filed for divorce, Dennis kidnapped their child. Fate rather than law released her from the marriage when Dennis died of carbon-monoxide poisoning while sleeping in his van. Le Ly then devoted her energy to her career, opening a restaurant and managing rental properties. When her assets exceeded a million dollars, she decided to use her wealth to benefit her homeland. In 1988 she founded the East Meets West (EMW) Foundation to establish medical clinics in Vietnam and to provide opportunities for American veterans to return to Vietnam to heal themselves and the country they had fought in. In 1989 she published her autobiography, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, with the help of freelance-writer Jay Wurtz. The book drew threats as well as praise, but among the receptive readers was Oliver Stone, who optioned the book to create the third installment of his Vietnam War film trilogy and who donated funds to finish the EMW Foundation’s first clinic in Vũng Tàu. Hayslip then devoted herself full-time to her humanitarian projects. In 1998 she left the EMW Foundation to start another humanitarian organization, the Global Village Foundation, which provides education , medicine, food, clean water, and vocational training for impoverished rural villagers in Vietnam and elsewhere. In 2007 a short documentary film titled From War to Peace and Beyond explored her career and humanitarian work. Le Ly Hayslip with Jay Wurtz | 73 from When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (1989) On a February morning in 1964, shortly after I had been released from the district jail after my first arrest, I was on sentry duty in Ky La. It was unusually chilly and a heavy mist hung in the valleys on three sides of the village. My shift had started at sunrise—about an hour before—and I knew it would be a long day. The older woman, Sau, who was supposed to be my partner, had not shown up. The Viet Cong were very careful about scheduling the teams of sentries upon whom so much depended. Usually, a team consisted of one mature woman and a girl, or two women—but never two girls, for the temptation to daydream or gossip was too strong and there was always the chance that something unusual would happen—something not foreseen by detailed Viet Cong instructions—which would require quick action and good judgment. Occasionally, Viet Cong inspectors would check us if the area seemed safe—Loi and Mau were the fighters detailed most often to my shift, and we had an easy, friendly relationship. But today, even the birds stayed shivering in their nests. The fog that morning made everything drippy and caused the world to collapse to my feet. To make matters worse, the white air absorbed all sounds from the village and ever since I arrived I had heard a faint moaning and grinding, which my predecessors (the sentries from dusk till dawn) had attributed to mountain spirits. Consequently, I put my bucket (we always carried a pail or basket to avoid suspicion) on a piece of dry ground beneath the big tree that was our station and made myself a fortress against the ghosts: sitting hunched with my arms over my knees, peeking between them and the brim of my useless sunhat at the watery wall of air. After what seemed like half the morning, the ground gradually opened around me—ten meters, twenty, finally a hundred and more until the fog touched the dikes at the edge of the field and the trees beyond...