Maya Lin: Artist-Architect of Light and Lines by Jeanne Walker Harvey and Dow Phumiruk

Maya Lin: Artist-Architect of Light and Lines by Jeanne Walker Harvey and Dow Phumiruk was published in 2017 and tells the story of Maya Lin, the young woman who created the design for the Vietnam Wall Memorial. 

She was born to Chinese immigrants who fled China. "Her parents had fled China at a time when people were told what to be and how to think. Her parents never told Maya what to be or how to think." Her mother was a poet and her father was an artist who made art with clay. In college, Maya wanted to be an architect. 

In her last year of college, there was a contest to design a memorial to honor the soldiers who died during the Vietnam War. The rules were that the memorial must blend with a park setting and include almost 58,000 names of those who died fighting or who were missing in action. 

"These rules rang true to Maya. She knew the power of names. Maya believed that a name brings back all the memories of a person, more than a photo of a moment in time." 

When a young college student, unknown to the art world was picked as the winner, some people objected, but her design was approved.

"The first time Maya visited the finished wall, she searched for the name of a father of a friend. When she touched the name, she cried, just as she knew others would."

The art in the book by Dow Phumiruk is beautiful and peaceful keeping with the design of the Vietnam Wall. I'm happy to add this book to my home library. 

Read to a child today even if that child is you. 

Allyson Gilmore donated this book to our NICU. 

Unnati Pandya donated this selection. 

Thank you for your continued support of our NICU book project. 

Link to our NICU book registry to donate books to babies in the newborn intensive care unit so their parents can read to them while they grow. You can also donate gently used books to our project by sending them to me or to Angie. Email me for a mailing address. We can use both English and Spanish books. If you have a graduate of the NICU, or if you have a baby whose life you would like to honor by donating books to this project, let me know, and I can make a book plate with their name for the books you donate.