A Minnesota PBS Initiative
Waves Enfolding: A Paper Memorial
At TPT's The Wall That Heals Weekend at the Minnesota State Capitol June 21-14, some of the 14,000 visitors learned how to fold a simple paper boat and helped to build a collection of 1,000 paper boats as part of poet and book artist Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen’s paper memorial entitled Waves Enfolding.
The project commemorates the lives lost during the Vietnamese refugee waves of 1954 and after The War in Vietnam and South East Asia, 1975-1992. Each boat represents a person that was unaccounted for, and will be remembered as part of an honoring and healing ritual on Lake Phalen on the last day of the Floating Library this summer.
The different sizes of boats represent different family members including grandparents, parents, siblings and babies.
Artist Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen showing Vietnam veteran Don Pederson how to fold a paper boat for her "Waves Enfolding" art project.
Watch Anh-Hoa read "In Her Blood There Are Mountains," and original poem dedicated to her mother.
Biographical Details
Submitted From: St. Paul, MN
Primary Location During Vietnam: Saigon, Vietnam 
Story Subject: Refugee
Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen is a poet, community artist, activist and educator. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College in Oakland, California. Anh-Hoa is a scholar for the Minnesota Humanities Center and has worked collaboratively with their War and Memory Conversation Series and MN Remembers Vietnam program and was a presenter for the PBS/MELSA (Metropolitan Library Service Agency) conversation series, The Vietnam War: 360. She is currently the artist-in-residence for The Floating Library 2018 and is a Lecturer at St. Catherine University. For more information about the Floating Library visit www.thefloatinglibrary.org.
Story Themes: Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen, Art, Boat People, Impact, Memorial, Poetry, Refugee, The Wall That Heals, Vietnamese
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