It's said that people don't read magazines anymore. Marilyn Tycer, Trinity '08, might beg to differ.
An August 2006 article in Vanity Fair turned her on to the plight of Agent Orange-affected children in Vietnam, and her desire to help culminated with the Jan. 7 release of her book, Invisible Children: The Third Generation of Agent Orange Victims in Vietnam.
The non-fiction work is a collection of photographs, art and descriptions of the children she met while visiting victims last summer. She spent most of her time in the Lang Hoa Binh Peace Village, a ward in a large hospital in Ho Chi Minh City set aside for Agent Orange victims.
"Seeing the pictures of the kids in the article who had terrible deformities and just realizing that this is a problem that's still happening made me sick to my stomach," she said.
As the title suggests, the victims that Tycer visited are the third generation of Vietnamese to be affected by Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant used by American military during the Vietnam War to expose Vietcong guerillas. The substance still contaminates areas of the countryside, causing serious health problems and disabilities among the populace.
The idea for Invisible Children was formulated by Tycer, a visual arts minor, and William Noland, associate professor of the practice of visual arts, in her capstone class. Tycer cited Merrill Shatzman, also an associate professor of the practice of visual arts, as a key influence as well.
"[Tycer] was doing a lot of soul-searching as she was approaching her senior year, so Merrill and I met with her and had a long conversation about her future plans, and they were very much in the air," Noland said. "She opened up a bit more about her family history. She's half-Vietnamese but had never been to Vietnam, so she had this seed of an idea about going back there and Agent Orange."
Noland and Tycer worked together to determine a way that she could use her visual talents in conjunction with this issue. They pursued funding opportunities on campus, and much of the money for travel and other expenses was covered when Tycer received the Benenson Award in the Arts and the Visual Studies Initiative summer scholarship.
Shatzman and Noland helped Tycer reconcile her other interests at Duke with her visual talents, searching for the best way to address the challenge of helping these victims.
"This project really served as a wonderful gathering point for all of her interests: her interest in medicine, her interest in psychology and her wonderful talent in art," Shatzman said.
But in the end, Tycer's primary motivation behind creating the book was to raise awareness of the issue.
"Mostly I just want people to know
that these kids are still suffering and that more kids will continue to get sick if we don't do something," she said. "It's an expensive problem, but it is manageable."
Invisible Children was self-published using Createspace and is available in both black-and-white and color versions on Amazon.com for $15.95 and $27.95, respectively.
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