War and Reconciliation

“Representing Reconciliation : Le Ly Hayslip and the Victimized Body” (Nguyen)

Posted on October 5, 2010 by Mary Catherine

The Theory

In Viet Thanh Nguyen‘s arti­cle “Representing Reconciliation : Le Ly Hayslip and the Victimized Body,” the author dis­cus­ses the work of Hayslip, a Vietnamese woman who now lives in America and has writ­ten auto­bio­gra­phies of her expe­rien­ces sur­roun­ding the Vietnam War. Nguyen argues that Hayslip’s authen­ti­city as a person affec­ted by the Vietnam War is depen­dent on her body as a victim. The “victim’s body” or “body-in-evi­dence” (608) is tra­di­tio­nally used in American dis­course as a silent exam­ple which both sides of an argu­ment can use for their own agenda ; for exam­ple, Nguyen explains how pho­to­graphs and tes­ti­mo­nies publi­shed of the My Lai mas­sa­cre were used by anti­war indi­vi­duals to show the hor­rors of the Vietnam War, but were also clai­med, by those who sup­por­ted the war, to be sub­jec­tive and inac­cu­rate depic­tions, which led many Americans to believe the mas­sa­cre did not happen.

Hayslip’s books are consi­de­red signi­fi­cant because she does not allow her­self to be used as a silent victim, but rather posi­tions her­self to be “a spea­ker and a spo­kes­per­son for the living and the dead” (608), when pre­viously there was no Vietnamese pers­pec­tive consi­de­red in American dis­course about the war.

Hayslip uses her body as a “victim’s body” to ful­fill a role impo­sed upon her by Americans as a person who expe­rien­ced the war in Vietnam, and one that she assi­gns her­self to authen­ti­cate her views and connect her­self to her Vietnamese rea­ders. Nguyen defi­nes Hayslip’s role as a victim’s body as bet­ween “repre­sen­ta­tion” and “reconci­lia­tion ;” she tries to repre­sent her­self as a sym­bo­lic figure of a woman affec­ted by life in a third-world coun­try, while also using her per­so­nal expe­rien­ces as a victim of war to “reconcile the United States and Viet Nam, but also to reconcile her­self to other over­seas Vietnamese who per­ceive her as whore, trai­tor, and self-pro­mo­ter” (610).

According to Nguyen, repre­sen­ta­tion occurs on two levels : on a micro­lo­gi­cal level, a person speaks on their own expe­rien­ces ; on a macro­lo­gi­cal level, a person speaks on behalf of a group of people. In Oliver Stone’s film Heaven and Earth, based on Hayslip’s book When Heaven and Earth Changed Places, an emble­ma­tic victim is used, mea­ning there is one person whose per­so­nal expe­rience stands for the col­lec­tive expe­rience of all their people. The “repre­sen­ta­tive” and “repre­sen­ted” are the same.

Nguyen argues that Hayslip is a good choice for a repre­sen­ta­tio­nal spea­ker because she is excep­tio­nal among women in third-world coun­tries, namely because of the poli­ti­cal and eco­no­mic impor­tance of Vietnam to America. However, writer Trang Hoang, in revie­wing Hayslip’s book When Heaven and Earth Changed Places in Amerasia Journal, com­ments that rea­ders “need to remind [them­sel­ves] that this is only one person’s expe­rience and cannot be repre­sen­ta­tive of the col­lec­tive.The book is a chro­ni­cle of Hayslip’s extra­or­di­nary life. It does not por­tray the life of an ave­rage Vietnamese citi­zen” (qtd. in Soderstrom). Unlike Nguyen, Hoang belie­ves that the excep­tio­nal nature of Le Ly Hayslip’s life should dis­count her from being a repre­sen­ta­tio­nal spea­ker for all Vietnamese people.

Hayslip equa­tes her body with nature and the land ; by beco­ming a symbol of land, Hayslip can sug­gest that her phy­si­cal hea­ling from from events like her rape at the hands of the Viet Cong or the abuse she recei­ves from her American hus­band stands in for the hea­ling of all of Vietnam.

Hayslip also inclu­des an idea­li­zed femi­ni­nity in her books, which draws on the tra­di­tio­nal virtue of chas­tity for Vietnamese women. Nguyen rela­tes the his­to­ri­cal Vietnamese poem Truyen Kieu (“The Tale of Kieu”), also men­tio­ned in Catfish and Mandala, to Hayslip’s use of a per­so­nal account to exem­plify the values of Vietnam as a whole. Hayslip fol­lows the form of the tale of Kieu by renoun­cing rela­tion­ships with men in order to help others and bring about reconci­lia­tion bet­ween the United States and Vietnam, as well as her­self and both coun­tries for their roles in making her a victim.

The Theory in Practice

The idea of the victim’s body being used in American society shows up often in popu­lar culture, in the guise of the emble­ma­tic victim, as des­cri­bed in the arti­cle in rela­tion to Oliver Stone’s film Heaven and Earth. Another movie I thought of was Life is Beautiful (in Italian, La Vita è Bella), in which actor Roberto Benigni’s cha­rac­ter Guido is sent to a concen­tra­tion camp ; his per­so­nal nar­ra­tive as a victim stands in for the expe­rience of all Jews who were forced to do the same during the Holocaust.

While this exam­ple fits with Nguyen’s concept of repre­sen­ta­tion on a micro- and macro­lo­gi­cal level, the movie does not deal with reconci­lia­tion. Catfish and Mandala, though per­haps not as obviously posi­tio­ning Pham as a repre­sen­ta­tive of all sur­vi­vors of the Vietnam War, does dis­cuss the idea of reconci­lia­tion bet­ween Vietnam and the United States. This is par­ti­cu­larly evi­dent in the mono­lo­gue spoken by Uncle Tu to Pham :

No, I do not hate the American sol­diers. Who are they ? They were boys, as I was. They were them­sel­ves, but also part of a grea­ter crea­ture — the govern­ment. As was I. I can no more blame them than a fish I eat can be blamed for what I do… There is nothing to for­give. There is no hate in this land. No hate in my heart. (267)

Source : http://aali­tandmc.word­press.com/201...

Additional Resources

Interview with Le Ly Hayslip :

Part 1 : http://www.you­tube.com/watch?v=ilgT...

Part 2 : http://www.you­tube.com/watch?v=LsIN...

Part 3 : http://www.you­tube.com/watch?v=oY8s...

Part 4 : http://www.you­tube.com/watch?v=d4dj...

Part 5 : http://www.you­tube.com/watch?v=OMyz...

Part 6 : http://www.you­tube.com/watch?v=eSUL...

PBS’s American Experience page, Vietnam Online : http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/vietna...

Soderstrom, Christina K. “Le Ly Hayslip.” Voices from the Gaps. The University of Minnesota, 1997. Web. 5 October 2010 : http://voices.cla.umn.edu/artist­pag...