The Vietnam War is America’s most complicated and controversial war. Unpopular, costly in casualties and treasure, and humiliating in its conclusion, the war left Americans feeling exhausted and depressed after years of sacrifice by soldiers who returned home not to parades, but to an emptiness for their service. To honor the men and women who served, a different kind of monument was chosen. It was conceived by Maya Lin, a Chinese American student at Yale, only 21, who won a public design competition for the memorial. She sought to capture the pain of the war but also to create something meaningful from that pain: “I imagined taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up, and with the passage of time, that initial violence and pain would heal.” This was a different way to speak about a war and memorialize those who fought and died – Lin and her design also elicited controversy for its minimalist and unconventional approach, her lack of experience and formal training, and her Asian ethnicity.

This lesson seeks to introduce the war from the legacy it left in America’s history. Usually, the Vietnam War is taught as a chronological history. It begins in the wake of World War II, moves to the end of French colonialism in Indochina and the division of Vietnam into North and South. The story continues with American entry into the conflict to support the “democratic“ South against the Communists of the North. Then, American commitment to the war deepens and the
fighting escalates in the belief that, if South Vietnam falls to Communism, all of Southeast Asia will follow – the “domino theory.” By beginning the study of the war with Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans War Memorial, the lesson immediately addresses the controversial nature of the war, the splits it engendered in American political and social life, and the wounds it inflicted on the body and the mind of the nation. From opening the history of the Vietnam War with a study of
the memorial, the events of the war can be seen from a different perspective allowing students to discover the complexity of the conflict.