Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision

This was my favorite movie we have watched so far. This 21 year old college student named Maya Lin had entered an architectural contest and was not expecting to win at all and ended up wining the entire competition. Her design would be chosen for the Vietnam memorial. She also was not expecting how much backlash she would get for the memorial, one Veteran even called it a "black scare". Many put her down for winning stating that she wasn't a veteran, was Asian and was a female but she never let any of that stop her. People who were trying to stop the memorial were very mean people and would do anything to stop it. Her memorial would list the people who have died serving this country during the Vietnam War and would be listed in the order they died instead of by their last names, no one wants to walk up to the wall and see 30 Dan Smiths. It is better as Maya said to take the extra three minutes to look up when they died and find that specific persons name on the wall. When I was 12 my mother, brother and I went to this wall and my mom was able to find her ex boyfriend who died in this war, I always wondering how she was able to find his name so quickly through all these thousands of names. It was fascinating to see how much this young woman achieved in her life at such a young age, she was the second youngest person ever to graduate from Yale with a doctorate. Veterans who attended her graduation thanked her for her memorial and mentioned that numbers are just numbers but by her putting the actual names of people that died really made you remember. When Maya was asked to do a Civil War Movement memorial she really wanted to strip the movement to the bare and get the spirit of it out and what came to her was a Martin Luther King Jr quote that she would use on the memorial. Along with that she would she would intertwine people's deaths with political movements and involved water. She involved the water so people could feel it and get a sense that they are part of it. My favorite piece that she did was the one composed of all glass; it was stunning and so different from anything I have ever seen. As the man at the end of the movie stated what Maya Lin has is "courage" and I couldn't agree more!