Customer Reviews

Ellis Island Interviews: In Their Own Words

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I picked this book up on a whim at the library and couldn't put it down. Since my ancestors passed through Ellis Island to come to America, this subject fascinated me. The stories in this book are memorable and give one the feeling of hope that America once symbolized for so many people looking for a better life. It doesn't paint a perfect picture of immigration, it tells the truth by using the immigrants own life stories. Well worth the read!

The result of diligent research, intensive interviewing and careful editing, the "Ellis Island Interviews - In Their Own Words" is a historical treasure trove. In the tradition of Studs Turkel, editor Peter Morton Coan has compiled dozens of interviews depicting the Ellis Island immigration experience. In their own words, immigrants from all walks of life relate the stories of their passage, often providing information about the places they came from, what their trip to the United States was like, why the came, and where they went after leaving Ellis Island. Each story is different of course, but each has a common goal: the dream of a better life in America. Coan also includes interviews with Ellis Island employees and provides background information on U.S. immigration policies and Ellis Island operations to help orient the reader.

Coan's excellent research and editing of the interviews has yielded an invaluable resource of our country's immigration history. The stories are fascinating, and the guts and determination possessed by many of the immigrants are beyond admirable. Reading the "Ellis Island Interviews" is a touching and humbling experience - it will help you to better appreciate what those who came before you have endured. Ellis Island ceased to be an INS port in 1954, and almost all of those who came to the U.S. through Ellis Island are now very advanced in age - we have Coan to thank for preserving their stories for generations to come.

This is an incredible book for anyone interested in how their ancestors immigrated to America. It gives honest first hand accounts of people that are currently in their 80's - 100's. I would recommend this to anyone interested in learning more about their roots.

The 20th century has been a horrible sewer in many ways, yet when you consider the state of people at the start of the century and the general state of us in 1998, we have come a fantastic distance. This books seems to me to underscore the problems of ignorance and poverty and the need for human courage and progress to address those issues. So many immigrant types of problems really revolved around poverty, and the ethic atrocities were a dreadful and misguided reflection on the fact that most of the world was poor and untutored. Everyone in life encounters trouble and sorrow, but our ancestors and ourselves who migrated took on an additional burden. They did it with grace and represent an example for all the rest of us. This author has done a great job portraying the stories of these remarkable people. This just has to be one of the most significant books I have ever read. I hope he writes about Asain and African immigration too, and even about the westward movement within America. The covered wagon folks were really migrants too. Anyway, a superb book. I couldn't put it down and I couldn't stop crying, It is very moving.

This wonderful book, with several good photos, portrays the whole Ellis Island story very well. It brings out the scope of feelings and experiences the immigrants underwent in trying to enter a new homeland. The eagerness, hopes, fears, anxieties, confusion, drive, and often desperate feelings involved in coming to America from so many countries from around the world is shown clearly in the factual text, diaries, interviews, and telling photos of the faces of the hopefuls.

I work for the National Park Service and we hold the tapes and transcripts to the original interviews from which Mr. Coan based this book. After reading hundreds of these interviews in their orginal form, I can tell you that Mr. Coan has done a great job finding the most interesting ones out of the thousands or interviews of Ellis Island immigrants conducted by the Park Service. Most of the interviews are boring, but Mr. Coan has spared you from the headache of reading those. He has also done a nice job editing the interviews into a cohesive readable piece. In the orginal the person might start telling a story, then get off on a tangent and finish the story later in the interview. Mr. Coan has spared the reader that agony as well. He did do one very odd, and I find annoying thing. For some reason he has altered the original names of some of the immigrants, while keeping others, such as Manny Steen intact. I am not sure why he did that since all of the people interviewed gave the government the rights to make their interview part of the public domain. In changing the names of some of the immigrants he has denied families for years to come the joy of coming upong their ancestor's story in print. Still, there are some amazing stories hidden among the thousands of boring immigration stories and Mr. Coan has brought them out obsurity. Sadly the federal government is in no hurry to get these stories out to the public, so it is up to authors and editors such as Peter Coan to do it. Thank you Mr. Coan for wading through the vast volumes of interviews and bringing these inspiring stories out in the open where they can influence us all.

Readers should know that the facts which describe the Spanish immigrants mentioned in this book were actually taken from the stories of Pilar Mendez Bertomeu and Sally Mendez Selles, my grandmother and her sister. The sisters, so eloquently described as Eva and Juanita Quinones in this book, immigrated from Galicia, Spain, not Bilela. My grandmother always used to sing Munequita Linda to her grandchildren

My grandfather is in this book! (Manny Steen from Ireland) He would have been thrilled - but I don't believe he ever saw it. He died the year this was published. He had interviews in other Ellis Island books and his voice is the voice of Ireland at Ellis Island. It's sad, but the publishers didn't even send him copies of the books. As others have pointed out in their reviews, many of these people are between 80 and 100 and can't exactly zip over to the bookstore for a copy. (And he definitely wasn't online!) So, if any publishers read this, please keep that in mind. They give their story, at least give them a book! MY grampa would have liked a book signing party, too!! :-)

I loved reading about each persons journey and struggle for a better life. I did not want the book to end and would put it down frequently to save each story for a different day. I plan to pick it up again in the future and re-read it. It was well written and the author did a good job of sharing the immigrants experiences.
It takes a lot of courage, confidence and optomism to leave everything behind and cross a great ocean in search of a better life. Americans can only feel pride in their forfathers and thankful for their journeys. Americans need to read stories like this to remember to appreciate and not take for granted the life they have today

I am still reading this fascinating and informative book.
So far I give it 4 stars.
I am writing to make a small correction to information on page 110.
The store in Portland, Maine listed as "Portius Mitchell" is
actually "Porteous Mitchell" which was located at 522 Congress St.
The Porteous building still stands and houses the Maine College of Art.
"Porteous Mitchell & Braun" dept. store opened in 1904.