A dissertation-like examination of why people leave many and varied
objects at the Veterans Memorial in Washington. Hass (American
Culture/Univ. of Michigan) sees several reasons behind the
outpouring of objects - what she calls a "strong, multivocal,
contradictory, unsolicited public response" - that have been left
at the wall since it was dedicated on the Mall in Washington, D.C.,
in 1982. Some of the reasons are obvious: the emotional need to
remember the dead; the patriotic and nationalist impulses to honor
their service; the reaction by Vietnam veterans against the
national cold shoulder given to them after they came home from
America's most controversial overseas war. Others are less obvious:
the fact that the memorial's simple design "tacitly asked people to
respond" with "their own interpretations," and the grave-decorating
traditions of African-Americans, Mexican-Americans,
Italian-Americans, and some American Indians. In her chapter on
American military memorializing history, Hass places great import
on the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, when for the first
time "common American soldiers were buried individually in graves
marked with their names." Hass ties these varied themes together
well. Her writing, for the most part, is clean and clear. Only
occasionally does she slip into turgid academes. Hass seems to have
done a thorough job of researching this multidisciplinary topic.
There is, however, one glaring error. Hass repeats the myth that
more Vietnam veterans have committed suicide than were killed in
the war. In an otherwise profusely documented book, she offers only
an ambiguous citation for this assertion. But the truth is that the
suicide statement has no basis in fact. Hass proves much better at
examining and explaining the reasons behind the myth that Vietnam
kept American POWs after the war. A sometimes illuminating look at
a unique national phenomenon. (Kirkus Reviews)
On May 9, 1990, a bottle of Jack Daniels, a ring with letter, a
Purple Heart and Bronze Star, a baseball, a photo album, an ace of
spades, and a pie were some of the objects left at the Vietnam
Veterans War Memorial. For Kristin Hass, this eclectic sampling
represents an attempt by ordinary Americans to come to terms with a
multitude of unnamed losses as well as to take part in the ongoing
debate of how this war should be remembered. Hass explores the
restless memory of the Vietnam War and an American public still
grappling with its commemoration. In doing so it considers the ways
Americans have struggled to renegotiate the meanings of national
identity, patriotism, community, and the place of the soldier, in
the aftermath of a war that ruptured the ways in which all of these
things have been traditionally defined. Hass contextualizes her
study of this phenomenon within the history of American funerary
traditions (in particular non-Anglo traditions in which material
offerings are common), the history of war memorials, and the
changing symbolic meaning of war. Her evocative analysis of the
site itself illustrates and enriches her larger theses regarding
the creation of public memory and the problem of remembering war
and the resulting causalities - in this case not only 58,000
soldiers, but also conceptions of masculinity, patriotism, and
working-class pride and idealism.
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