When Heaven And Earth Changed Places Summary

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places takes place mainly during the Vietnam War. Le Ly Hayslip wrote this book about her life during this war. She was born in Vietnam into a farmer family and made sense of the war through Buddhist philosophies. It was the only way she was able to understand what was going on around her as a young child. The Viet Cong deceived the villagers into thinking that both of their beliefs were the same. Hayship fell for the trick and soon gets raped, exiled and forced out of her village to go to Saigon for work. Her story then goes through many boyfriends, husbands, and two children. She eventually makes a return to Vietnam sixteen years later to see her family and they accept her back after getting to know each other again. Hayslip describes her life in this memoir of what it was like for her to go through this war. Overall, she braved much throughout her life and put it on paper for people to see what it was like for the Vietnamese people.

58,000 Americans were dead by the end of the entire war. It all started with control issues between the North and South of Vietnam. Even though both sides wanted a unified Vietnam, the two leaders wanted the unity in a different way. Ho and his supporters in the North modeled after other communist countries while Bao and his supporters wanted close economic and cultural ties to the West. They began fighting to take power which started the war. America began directing troops to Vietnam and that started the casualties. Protests were held all over the world against the world, although it wouldn’t do much. After the war ended, the soldiers that survived came home. Soldiers were diagnosed and suffered from disorders and illnesses such as PTSD or depression. The war never ended for those