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Public Affairs Television "Becoming American" Interview with Maya Lin

BILL MOYERS: 'Course the bigotry and the hatred and the racism did not have the last word. The monument was the last word.

MAYA LIN: Yeah. Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: It is. And people who visit it are visibly moved. I go there many times, and I never go there without being moved myself and without seeing everyone who is passing by deeply moved. Why do you think they are so moved by it?

MAYA LIN: I think because it's tapping into some very important, I would say ancient needs. I think fundamentally, when I was designing it, I thought about the nature of death and acknowledging death. And I think in many, many cultures, dying and the acknowledgement of the death is so much a part of the living. It's a ritual, and there are big rituals around it.

I think America's a very young country and we're afraid of growing old 'cause we're really young. As a country, we're afraid of dying, so what do we do? We pretend it doesn't exist. We do not make huge emotional acknowledgements of that type of a pain. We tend to try to forget about it, which is probably the worst thing you can do.

But if you think about it, it is a much more Taoist belief. You offer it up. And they will get it. You will find your way to it. But it's not like you're going to do this. It goes against every grain in my body to preach.

Americans are used to the loud super-statements, preach it, tell it, super simple, super graphics. But there's this other side. I think you could be sort of heartened that we can all tap into that emotion.

BILL MOYERS: It's extraordinary to watch people touch the names. It's as if something were passing back and forth between the name and the touch.

MAYA LIN: And there's something very quiet and very intimate. And I think again, that intimacy which is so important I think to any of the work that I do-- and people don't think of that -- there's more of a bravado and a largesse. I always joke that I don't make monuments, I make anti-monuments. Again, let's rethink what a monument is.

Everyone was shocked at the size of text and they argued, "You can't do that." Because a text in public spaces should be large. I equate it to when you read a billboard, yes you read it en masse. But it's more of a personal connection if you read a book 'cause you're just so connected to it.

So can you put a book out in the public realm? Can we make it that personal and still be in a very large public space? And again, there's another one of those opposites. Very public, but intensely private.

And yep, I think that is an aesthetic that is coming right out of a different culture. But we're all human, and we can all very much relate to it.

BILL MOYERS: I didn't quite understand it-- why it was so powerful to be there until I actually read the sentence from your essay where you say, "Looking at that black marble, it would be an interface between our world and the quieter, darker, more peaceful world beyond."

MAYA LIN: Right. And it's a world we can't enter because we can't pass through those names. And it's painful.

I had not known anyone who had died. I just had a feeling that it's gotta be the most painful experience that you will ever go through. But what you have is the memory. And you have to accept it and then you have to turn around and walk back into the light. But if you don't accept it, you'll never get over it.

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever go there?

MAYA LIN: When I'm in Washington, I'll drop in. Washington is not my favorite town. (LAUGH) There are horrible memories of my time spent there building it, so I don't tend to go back there unless I have to. But if I do, I enjoy visiting.

BILL MOYERS: Some veterans wanted a more conventional memorial. They wanted the bronze figures of the heroic soldiers, like the Iwo Jima statue, which is quite impressive. But you didn't want to go there, did you?

MAYA LIN: No. Obviously I'm being influenced by the earth artists that are coming out of the '70s, like [Robert] Smithson, [Michael] Heizer, [Richard] Serra. Not even knowing it because I wasn't even studying it. But that's the vocabulary.

I was going after something very psychological. When I say: think like a child, stop the baggage, when we look at a man on a horse we know what a man on a horse is. It's a representation of something, and we kind of intellectually get what it's referring to.

One of things about the Vietnam War, I couldn't think of any one image. I can think of a few images, but there isn't one image-- like the Iwo Jima, the raising of the flag is an image we can all respond to. And it relates to what we think.

There isn't one image that comes to mind that everyone would truly connect to. And the odd thing is, that's where figurative sometimes gets so specific, it doesn't relate. It relates to you, but it doesn't relate to you. They added the three men, then the women got upset because there wasn't a woman. So then, there's that problem that can occur. When you stick within the abstract realm-- this is where Tom Wolfe weighed into it: How can abstraction be human? It's sort of like how can music, which is completely abstract, make people cry or laugh? Music. Totally abstract sounds, how they're laid out. That abstraction can be as human and relate to you. And that's where the name, any person who knew that person, everything about that person will come back in the name.

BILL MOYERS: The name is so concrete.

BILL MOYERS: Was there a moment of awareness, a moment when you had to claim your Chinese-ness?

MAYA LIN: No. I would say from the mid-20's onward it's been this increasing awareness of my heritage. I did fight it. I fought it very hard in my teen—late teenage years and in my 20's.

It's my art that kind of guided me to see it. It was never like, my work is going to be about my Asian American identity. It was more like I just make work. This is what I do. And then I look back and I go, oh, I get it.

And my art has really helped me understand the two sides of me. And that has led me to a point where I'm actually-- I have two young children and I am really--

BILL MOYERS: You want your two children to know.

MAYA LIN: And I know that I don't know it, and it's embarrassing. And I want to finally know it. My guess is the first half of my life I've spent finding a little bit. You want to feel comfortable with where you are and then you can study both sides. And I'm very, very, very much wanting to know my past.

BILL MOYERS: There's a story, maybe it's hypocriful, of something that happened when you were a student in your junior year abroad in Denmark.

MAYA LIN: Yeah. I had been blessed that racism had never really entered into my realm. I get to Denmark and ironically I think they thought I was a Greenlander at times. An eskimo. Because if I get a suntan, I change through different races. Some people think I'm American Indian. When I'm in Mexico, I blend.

Two things happened. When they thought I was Chinese, they would say things like, "Oh, so do your parents only a laundry or a restaurant?" And I didn't quite know if they were joking or not. And they weren't joking. They were trying to be very kind, but the stereotypes were pretty hellacious.

And then what happened is the sun finally showed up. In Scandinavia, I tan pretty easily. I remember getting on a bus once and sitting down. And no one would sit anywhere near me. For the first time in my life I felt, oh, now I know what it's like.

In Boston I had a horrible incident.

BILL MOYERS: In Boston. When you were in school?

MAYA LIN: Yeah. I was in school and I was taking the subway in. And I remember these three working class guys were up on the top of the passover and they were trying to spit on me. And they were saying incredibly racist and intensely painful things.

What's strange is you look at Black Americans, Latino Americans, Asian Americans, Chinese Americans, and New York is such a mixture. And at times you wonder, sometimes we're acceptable, we blend in, we're not spat on. Do other races have a harder time? Yes, the answer is horrible at times.

And you can really relate. And you feel sometimes the funny thing about being Asian American is if you're black American you're American, whereas I will always inevitably get into a cab sometime and the cab driver will turn around and say, "Where are you from?" And I'll say, "Ohio." And they'll say, "No, no, where are you really from?"

And there could be a white German who's English is okay. He could have just traveled here yesterday and they will assume he's American. I was born and raised here. Looking the way I look, you will always get that question, even sometimes at polite cocktail party: Where are you from? Where are you really from? And that leaves you in a weird in- between world. Like you're both.

BILL MOYERS: So the stereotypes exist even now.

MAYA LIN: I don't think anyone means it to be negative. It's just the problem is you're not from here. You will always physically look like you're a foreigner. So if you're truly born and raised here what does that do to your psyche?

You're American. It's not the same as if you were born in Poland and you're first generation 'cause if you look white, they're not gonna question you the same way. They're not going to ask for your genealogy. Whereas I swear it's like I really have to explain always. At this point, it's so much easier to say, I was born here but my mother's from Shanghai and my [father]-- you know, it just makes it all simpler.

But that does something to you. Like, well, are we really not allowed to be from here? And then I am at times very sensitive to Asian American-- the Chinese American stereotyping that goes on. Whether it's in TV or movies, when can we get to be people who happen to be Asian in a part versus this is a part that an Asian gets because they do Kung-fu.

We've technically assimilated. Yet at the same time the stereotypes shock me at times.

There was an advertisement for a hotel chain, and it had an Asian woman making the bed. There was this three sentence paragraph about how she was born to serve you. It completely smacked of the notion of the docile, servile Asian woman.

My ears were burning. I think equivalent stereotypes in other ethnic groups would have been nailed down. Maybe they're more sensitive or they're louder about fighting it.

BILL MOYERS: Yes, if that ad had had an African American woman in it and said she as born to serve you there would have been an uproar.

MAYA LIN: Oh, there would have been an uproar. I think the next generations are going to be inclined to speak out. It's still kind of engrained in me to be very, very polite. I mean, that's how I was raised. It's just not in my nature. I think as the next generations go on, they might be more vocal. So there's that inherently we don't speak out in protest the way we might have to to change it.

Or two there's also that lumping us all together as Asian American. And you've got such diverse cultural groups within that. So I've always felt it was almost a western conceit, that they were just gonna lump together all the rest that didn't fit in anywhere else. But it also means how do you bound together, how do you form community when you've got societies that culturally are not that similar and yet they are lumped together by western eyes.

It does help with certain things because it puts a voice together. But it also can be problematic in galvanizing that identity and that voice. I am surprised that the stereotypes can be so much a part of images we see.

BILL MOYERS: What about your two daughters, will all this be behind them? Will they ever be free, liberated, because of what has happened? To not have to think this way anymore? Tell me about it them.

MAYA LIN: They're really cute. And what I find fascinating is that we will get asked when we bring them out, my husband and I.

On several occasions, we've been asked, "Are they half?" Which is kind of a very kind of odd-- are they half. Like are they half-- No, they're full children.

BILL MOYERS: Your husband's background is?

MAYA LIN: He's American Jewish. My daughters look very Caucasian. He's Caucasian. You can tell in the eldest girl's eyes—but it's not recognizable except by someone else. Usually it's a young girl who asks that question, like a 20 year old woman.

And I know that she's looking at them going, "What are you gonna be?" You can relate because they'll go through what she sort of went through a little bit. If both my husband and I had been Chinese they would get asked that exact same question in the cab, "Where are you from?"

Because no matter how long you've been here you're not going to be quite allowed to be American, which is very intriguing about all the Asian races.

BILL MOYERS: So you're still living between boundaries.

MAYA LIN: Yeah, between worlds. It's a funny place to be. But it's also who you are. You might try to understand it. And I think at this point I embrace it; it's great. You can share a culture and take from both, but it's a balancing act.

BILL MOYERS: While I look at the cover of your book "Boundaries," that's your hand around that beautiful giode, which is one of my favorite stones of the earth. I think, she's got the whole world in her hand.

MAYA LIN: Nah. I don't know where that cover came from. But as far as just between the design of it I just love. Wherever I go, I collect rocks, and I just think they're so beautiful. Everyone assumes they're so simple. You look at them and think it's a dumb simple water worn rock.

If you ever tried to analyze its shape, it's one of the most complex forms. Think about it, it's every compound curve. There's nothing symmetrical about it. It's about looking at something again and then appreciating it. I mean, nature, is so complex.

BILL MOYERS: Maya Lin, thank you very much.

MAYA LIN: You're welcome.

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