Ava Finn

Professor Giebel
HSTAS 265 A
9 March 2023
Viet Nam Wars Final Paper

The several memoirs we have read for this course have all shed light on the Vietnam War

through the intimate, day-to-day details of Vietnamese peoples’ lives. A Viet Cong Memoir

covers the vast experiences of political figure Truong Nhu Tang, while Last Night I Dreamed of

Peace is comprised of diary entries shedding light on the every day occurrences and feelings for

doctor Dang Thuy Tram as she treated those in the war and sought to find her place advancing

communism for the country. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places by Le Ly Hayslip offers

yet another framework, interchanging between her experiences growing up during the war and

her return home in the 1980s. In Le Ly Hayslip’s When Heaven and Earth Changed Places,

Dang Thuy Tram’s Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, and Truong Nhu Tang’s A Viet Cong Memoir,

the unfathomable suffering of the Vietnam War is described through the respective lenses of

gender and ideological commitment; ultimately conveying the magnitude of atrocities

experienced by the Vietnamese while articulating the depth of love and connection to culture and

country that fueled their perseverance.

In Last Night I Dreamed of Peace and A Viet Cong Memoir, Dang Thuy Tram and Truong

Nhu Tang’s fervent commitment to their ideologies is illustrated by the excruciating sacrifices

each makes. In Truong Nhu Tang’s telling of his time being imprisoned and tortured, he

expresses his refusal to make a written statement claiming to be a communist, remarking, “[i]t

was part of the regime’s ideology that anyone who opposed them must be a Communist. They

could not accept the fact that there might be people who hated them for the travesty they had

made of the country’s life [...] Any opposition [...] had to have an insidious external source [...] I
was determined that as far as I could help it, they would not get any satisfaction from me”

(Truong 113). The resilient, defiant attitude Truong demonstrates as he gives his scathing

perspective is remarkable given the threat of incomprehensible violence in front of him. His

steadfastness in his political beliefs even in the face of immense physical and mental suffering is

astonishing and incredibly admirable. The focus on denying the “satisfaction” of his communist

confession highlights the interrelationship between the political and the personal that drives his

willingness to endure what is to come; his commitment to his belief in what is best for the

country reads almost like a personal stubbornness as a result of his passion. After enduring utter

brutality and cruelty while imprisoned, Truong Nhu Tang eventually “confesses” on the advice of

his wife, who has maneuvered bribes to transfer him. The new prison, however, is not much

improved; Truong writes, “[w]henever the guard opened the port to stick in my rice bowl or say

something to me, a square of light from the corridor would shine into my eyes. Other than that it

was perpetual night. I was like an animal in a cave” (Truong 117). The eternity of solitude and

darkness Truong endured even after attempting to make a concession is impossible to

understand. Truong’s maintained political engagement and commitment despite the egregious

treatment and conditions he suffered speaks to the gravity of the war for Vietnamese people and

the intensity of longing for unity.

Though Dang Thuy Tram’s experience of the conflict is quite different from Truong Nhu

Tang’s, her similar dedication to her political ideas—and specifically the Communist Party—are

reflected in the internal agony she describes. At one point, she seeks to re-focus herself, writing,

“I must pare away my romantic notions. I must diminish the purity and innocence in my heart. I

must be more calculating and more cautious in my actions. I must show wisdom and shrewdness

commensurate with my position” (Dang 93). Dang’s imposed discipline is a testament to her
support of the Party, as she seeks to align herself with the traits “commensurate with [her]

position”. In assigning herself these changes, Dang makes visible the internal loss and suffering

caused by the war. Her belief in her vision for the country’s direction drives a reinvention of

herself, a forced eschewing of any romance, “purity”, or innocence she views herself as once

having. While not a physical or tangible suffering, the re-orienting of mentality Dang undergoes

in pursuit of her political dreams for Vietnam is striking and somber, as she must abandon the

joyful parts of her character to embrace a role she sees as essential in fighting for the Vietnam

she believes in. This loss extends beyond simply internal experiences, too, as Dang remarks, “I

don’t know why I am comparing my position in the conference today with that of my role as a

big sister [...] Back then, I was their playful and attention-demanding big sister Thuy. Now I am a

cadre with heavy responsibilities entrusted to me by the Party” (Dang 90). The shift in outlook

Dang has in hopes of best serving her cause becomes an external loss as well, as her new duties

have changed the nature of her relationships. She must forgo the easygoing, carefree connections

she cherishes in order to be the version of herself that she believes will best support the Party.

With the all-consuming end of the war and political victory as naturally urgent priorities, Dang

loses aspects of herself and her life.

A more unique focus of Le Ly Hayslip’s When Heaven and Earth Changed Places is the

particular violence suffered by women during the war and its psychological impact on one’s

sense of self. Hayslip recounts the harrowing story of what she presumes will be her murder, but

ultimately becomes sexual violence. As she realizes this, she recalls: “New terror rose inside me.

I wriggled like a crab—flopped like a fish—toward the grave, for the safety of the hole, but with

my hands tied behind me and my feet tangled in my pants and Loi’s fence-post legs holding me

fast, I couldn’t move” (Hayslip 197). The divergence from the assigned task of killing Hayslip to
instead rape her sheds light on the gendered nature of experiences of the war, as her status as a

woman makes her vulnerable to the sexual violence committed against her when she was

supposed to be killed. Additionally, the particular emphasis on “the safety of the hole” Hayslip

discusses is intensely distressing, as the implication of her preference for her own grave achingly

illustrates the horrific “choices” available to her. Shortly after, she expresses that “the act of

making life itself had left me feeling dead” (Hayslip 198) and laments that her “[...] whole life

now seemed burdened with time: time I would not spend with a husband for whom I had been

ruined; time free of happy children that I would never bear” (Hayslip 200). Hayslip’s

heartbreaking reflections on what happened to her demonstrate the sense of psychological loss

she has endured, as the vision she had of her life has been irreversibly thrown off its trajectory in

her eyes after the trauma she has suffered. To mourn the potential for a partner and children at

such a young age is another dimension of agency lost through the sexual assault, and Hayslip’s

open discussion of her experience is a devastating display of the war’s lasting impact by gender.

When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Last Night I Dreamed of Peace also

illuminate how the cultural relationship to ancestry and land shapes each author’s mentality of

survival, calling attention to the planes of indescribable damage caused by the war that are often

neglected in Western narratives. In Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, Dang writes a diary entry

about a rumored relocation request to Area General Hospital, which compels her writing: “Is

there anything like this land? This land has nurtured me with affections and challenges, trained

me to mature in the face of suffering, and made me a solid cadre” (Dang 88). This attention to

“the land” itself as a source of caretaking, parenting, and wisdom is moving. Crediting the

physical land itself in reflecting on personal growth is not well-echoed in Western cultures

typically, and hearkens back to the deeply profound relationship between ancestry, land, and
worship that has been a part of Vietnamese culture for centuries. Reverberations of the reverence

and sacred cultural designation of land are intertwined in its personification in the passage,

ultimately conveying the gravity of geographic destruction and forced relocation inflicted by the

war. Similarly, in When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, Le Ly Hayslip remarks—while

terrified she is about to be killed—that, “[m]y little bones would become a part of this tiny island

for the rest of time—my spirit a mournful howl in the wind. With dirt in my eyes and mouth and

hair, I was already becoming part of Mother Earth” (Hayslip 194). In a very different

circumstance and tone than Dang’s mention of the earth, Hayslip connects her physical self to the

land as she mentally prepares for death, describing a form of permanence derived from her

blending with the land. She says her body will be part of the island “for the rest of time”, and

discusses her spiritual being as finding a home with the wind as well. This description of nature

as a permanent resting place for those who have passed on is moving, and once again reiterates

the relationship between physical land, ancestry, and spirituality in Vietnamese culture. In order

to cope with her presumed death, Hayslip is able to find her posthumous self in the land

surrounding her. This deeply emotional moment further underscores the damages of the war that

are not fully recognized or understood in Western perspectives, as the destroyed lands and

fractured families suffer not only physically, mentally, and materially, but also on a spiritual

plane.

The three texts Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, A Viet Cong Memoir, and When Heaven

and Earth Changed Places are each profound and devastating accounts of the Vietnam War from

respective Vietnamese perspectives. In Last Night I Dreamed of Peace and A Viet Cong Memoir,

the authors deal intimately with the burden of their political will and the heartbreaking,

distressing consequences they suffer in support of their ideological visions. Slightly differently,
Le Ly Hayslip’s When Heaven and Earth Changed Places sheds light on the gendered nature of

violence in war and the devastating impact her experiences have on her psychologically. These

two lenses communicate to readers the unimaginable loss and torment the authors suffered, but

they also get across the deep love of country and culture that shape their resilience over the

course of the conflict.

 Works Cited

Đặng Thùy Trâm. Last Night I Dreamed of Peace: The Diary of Dang Thuy Tram. Translated by

Andrew X. Pham, Harmony Books, 2007.

Hayslip, Le Ly, and Jay Wurts. When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Vietnamese

Woman's Journey from War to Peace. Anchor Books, a Division of Random House LLC,

2017.

Truong, Nhu Tang, and David Chanoff. A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam

War and Its Aftermath. Vintage Books, 1985.