What a Vietnamese Survivor’s Story Showed me About Womanhood

I waded through the wreckage of trigger-happy Marines spiraling into madness, girls prostituting themselves to feed their families, legless boys sobbing in hospitals, and wafts of napalm (most pungent, of course, in the morning). I was taking “Literature and Film of the Vietnam War” –by far the most emotionally harrowing of my college classes. Amid the swamp, Le Lay Hayslip’s memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places was the proverbial diamond in the rough — an apt metaphor, because Hayslip’s beauty was refined by the pressure she endured. There’s so much I could write about Heaven and Earth, but I want to highlight what the story showed me about womanhood.

Hayslip records memories of her discussions with her parents, saying:

“A woman may do many things, but the first thing god equipped her for is to bring forth and nourish life, and to defend it with a warrior’s strength. My task, I was beginning to see, was to find life in the midst of death and nourish it like a flower — a lonely flower in the graveyard my country had become” (83).

While both men and women can protect life, only women can directly bring life into the world. They have to be gentle and humble enough to submit their body to vulnerability and 9 months of weakness and nausea, but they have to be strong enough to sustain and nourish that life.

I think the quotation speaks to the dichotomy that plagues the cultural representations of women that many of us have internalized — the stereotypical Disney princess innocently waiting for rescue or the leather-clad, high-kicking assassin-superhero. Each are, in different circles, held up as female ideals. But both are fantasies. The innocent princess/’50’s housewife is sheltered and powerless against evil and violence. The powerful feminist loses her feminine uniqueness and becomes like a man (or, in Hollywood, finds her femininity relegated to her relative attractiveness in spandex). The latter lacks the caring vulnerability of a life-giver, but the former lacks the resiliency of a warrior. Hayslip unites them both in a powerful example of feminine strength.

Hayslip endured immense trauma including being tortured by the south Vietnamese, raped by the north Vietnamese, and abused by her American husband. Despite that, she established herself successfully in America, protected her children when her husband tried to kidnap them, and started a charity to rebuild Vietnam after the war. She would never have a shot at being a Marine, but she’s strong enough to stand between her sons and her husband. Her innocence takes a (literal) beating, but she remains gracious and devoted her life to rebuilding her land and helping veterans. To come out of horror and oppression with a vision of a better world and the dedication to work towards it is true strength.