Le Ly Hayslip

Le Ly Hayslip (1949-    ) is a Vietnamese-American author, former restaurateur and humanitarian activist.  She is most known for her work as author of two bestselling books, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places:  A Woman's Journey from War to Peace (1989) and Child of War, Woman of Peace (1993).  Le Ly Hayslip is also the founder of the East Meets West Foundation and the Global Village Foundation, two non-profit organizations that provide humanitarian assistance to the less fortunate living in rural areas of Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries.

Born as Phung Thi Le Ly on December 19, 1949 in Ky La, a small town outside of Da Nang, Central Vietnam, she was the youngest in a pheasant family of six children.  At the age of 12, she first witnessed the ravages of war when American helicopters landed in her village as heavy fighting broke out between the Republic of South Vietnam and the communist North Vietnam.  Two years later, she was imprisoned by the South Vietnamese government on suspicion of being a "revolutionary sympathizer".  As a teenager, she would endure being tortured by the South Vietnamese Republican troops, rape by the Viet Cong and the deaths of both her father and a brother in war.

While in Vietnam, she worked a variety of different jobs in order to survive.  While she and her mother worked as housekeepers for an affluent family in Saigon, she was impregnated by her employer and subsequently lost her job.  She resettled in Da Nang as a single mother and found work in the black market, which ranged from occasional drug dealings to even once working as a prostitute.  She later juggled two jobs working as a nurse's assistant at a hospital in Da Nang by day and a cocktail waitress by night when she began a relationship with an American civilian contractor, Ed Munroe.  They married in 1969 and Le Ly gave birth to her second son.   The following year, she resettled in San Diego, California.  Three years later, Ed Munroe who was twice her age, died of emphysema making her a young widow at the age of 24 with two sons.   Le Ly Hayslip's second marriage was to Dennis Hayslip which produced her third son born on her 26th birthday.  Dennis Hayslip extended his surname to all Le Ly Hayslip's two older sons from her previous relationships, as well.  They filed for divorce in 1982 before Dennis Hayslip, an alcoholic and manic depressive, committed suicide.

(Back Left to Right) Le Ly Hayslip, Oliver Stone, Joan Chen,
 (Front) Hiep Thi Le

In the United States, Le Ly Hayslip worked as a factory worker and live-in caretaker before becoming a part owner of a successful restaurant.  In 1986, she traveled to Vietnam for the first time in 16 years.  After witnessing the harsh conditions in her native homeland, Le Ly Hayslip founded the East Meets West Foundation in 1988, a non-profit organization that provides assistance to the needy in Vietnam.  In 1989,  When Heaven and Earth Changed Places: A Woman's Journey from War to Peace, a book she had co-authored with Jay Wurts on her memoirs of her life during the Vietnam War and her first return trip there three years prior.  The book was published again by Plume the following year.  In 1993, her second book, Child of War, Woman of Peace, which her eldest son, James Hayslip, had co-authored, was published again by Doubleday.  Oliver Stone optioned her first book and made it into a major Hollywood production movie, Heaven and Earth (1993), which starred Tommy Lee Jones, Joan Chen, Dustin Nguyen and newcomer Hiep Thi Le.  The cast also included veteran film actor from South Vietnam, Doan Chau Mau, as well as a cameo appearance by Le Ly Hayslip, herself.  In 1999, Le Ly Hayslip founded the Global Village Foundation.  In 2009, she participated in a filmed odyssey with Tiana Alexandra entitled as Heaven on Earth:  Tiana, Le Ly and Michael Jackson in search of the late pop music icon's spirit and featured impersonators of Michael Jackson in Vietnam and the United States.  Le Ly Hayslip has been honored with numerous awards for her humanitarian efforts and has lectured at many different university campuses all over the world.

Link(s):

Global Village Foundation Official Website