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Om författaren

Kristin Ann Hass is Associate Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan and the author of Carried to the Wall: American Memory and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (University of California Press, 1998).

Verk av Kristin Ann Hass

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Veterens Day reading, 11/11/11 no less.

In this book Hass focuses on the act of leaving a note, a present, some form of tribute to fallen soldiers at the base of the wall by people for various reasons. This was unexpected by the designers and keepers of the memorial but they quickly organized a system of collecting these objects. Hass in several sections traces the roots behind this at-first spontaneous* desire to give or leave something behind at the memorial, starting in the American Civil War when monuments first began to remember the people who did the fighting as opposed to glorification of the state. This change was also represented in the changing nature of cemeteries from stark burial grounds to places of rest and contemplation in the 1830s and in the continuation of regional and cultural burial practices outside the WASP sphere. She goes on to describe the shift from monumental to "living" memorials in the mid-20th century (Xxxx Memorial Auditorium or Playground or Highway for example) and, since the book was published in 1998, she describes the Oklahoma City bombings and the spontaneous memorials that developed around the site.

The section that I enjoyed the most, and was the most moving, was the first chapter on the idea and building of the memorial itself. The controversy surrounding Maya Lin's design in particular is fascinating, considering the near-universal praise it has received since becoming dedicated. I visited the memorial once ten years or so ago and I can't remember seeing the statues, the wall truly dominates the memory.

The book is well-written, short, and well researched, but the later chapters seemed too broadly sketched, and despite constantly referring back to the wall and the theme of leaving objects "for the dead" I lost some interest. She overreaches in her analysis of the objects and makes some guesswork (as of her writing there was no catalog of the collection so she pulls random month/day figures instead) that might be interesting reading but wasn't necessarily good history. Carried to the Wall is a solid introduction to the history of memory in America and could do with some revisiting in the post-9/11 and Freedom Tower/1 WTC world.

*As soon as it became generally known that objects left at the memorial were being collected there was a "bandwagon" effect that increased the number (and nature) of objects near-exponentially.
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ManWithAnAgenda | Feb 18, 2019 |

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Statistik

Verk
3
Medlemmar
37
Popularitet
#390,572
Betyg
3.0
Recensioner
1
ISBN
10