Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910-1940 [Paperback]

Him Mark Lai (Author), Genny Lim (Author), Judy Yung (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1991

Text and poetry from immigrants who passed through the island which has been called the "Ellis Island of the West".

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Chinese

Product Details

• Paperback: 174 pages
• Publisher: University of Washington Press; Reprint edition (September 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0295971096
• ISBN-13: 978-0295971094
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #305,648 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #57 in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Chinese
  • #58 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > Asian American

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Are You CONCERNED About Immigration?, June 30, 2008

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910-1940 (Paperback)

No immigrant population has ever been treated as shabbily and violently as the Chinese, who began arriving in large numbers during the California Gold Rush and who were recruited in even larger numbers to build transcontinental railroads, build levees in California, and to supplant African-American cotton pickers in Mississippi. The Chinese were brutalized, excluded, mocked, and TAXED! In 1852, a Foreign Miner's Tax, which accounted for more than half of the tax revenue collected in California between 1850 and 1870, was imposed on Chinese miners. Parallel fears fueled the antagonism against the Chinese: first, that they were unassimilable; second, that they would pollute the bloodlines of the Great Race, the Anglo-Saxon stock, which would seem to imply a measure of assimilation, or else outbreed "us". Laws were passed to exclude Chinese women, and then, in 1882, to exclude all immigration from China. Laws continued to severely curtail Chinese immigration until the 1960s, but exclusion was never 100% effective. The principal loohole was the acknowledged human right of Chinese-Americans to bring their wives and children to "Gold Mountain." The officials charged with overseeing this trickle of migration were invariably convinced that most of it was fraudulent; they were fierce and self-righteous in ferreting out the "paper sons," those illegal immigrants of yesteryear.

From 1910 to 1940, all immigrants arriving in California from China - including many who were en route to Mexico or Cuba - were quarantined in wooden barracks on the hidden side of Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, north of Alcatraz. About 175,000 Chinese, men, women and children, spent from three days to three years in detention on Angel Island, and quite a few of them ended up being shipped home. This book tells the story of that immigration in thirty pages of general history and through interviews with thirty-nine elderly survivors of the Island experience. Pictures of the detention station and its operations are also included, and suggest the bleak, crowded, disrespectful conditions that prevailed.

In 1940, the barracks on Angel Island were closed and abandoned. The buildings remained in disrepair until 1970, by which time Angel Island was a state park. Then the buildings were slated for demolition, but during an inspection, a park ranger, Alexander Weiss, noticed that the walls of the wooden buildings were covered with Chinese characters, carved or inscribed. He notified scholars at San Francisco State University, the inscriptions were photographed and translated, it was confirmed that they were chiefly poems composed in inmates during detention, and the Asian American community of San Francisco bagan to lobby for preservation of the historical site, equivalent to Ellis Island in the memory of European American immigrant descendents.

The station is now a major tourist attraction of the Bay Area, and easily one of the most interesting, to which thousands of visitors travel by ferry. The calligraphic inscriptions are visible, and translations are readily available. Unlike the stereoptype of "coolie" immigrants, the Chinese who cut these characters in the walls were literate representatives of a great civilization, however penniless and friendless they may have been when they arrived in the Land of the Free, only to be imprisoned.

The bulk of this touching book is composed of selected poems, in Chinese and in English translation, from the walls of the Island. Some express desolation:

"Living on Island, away from home elicits a hundred feelings.
My chest is filled with a sadness I cannot bear to explain.
Night and day, I sit passively and listlessly.
Fortunately, I have a novel as my companion."

Some are angry:

"Sadly, I listen to insects and angry surf.
The laws pile layer upon layer; how can I dissipate my hatred?
Drifting in as a traveler, I met with thsi calamity.
It's more miserable than owning only a flute
in the marketplace of Wu."

A few are vengeful:

"I have 10,000 hopes that the revolutionary armies
will complete their victory,
And help make the mining enterprises successful
in the ancestral land.
They will build many battleships and come
to the U.S. territory,
Vowing never to stop till the white men
are completely annihilated."

Of course the battleships never came. Instead there were waves of industrious and civil immigrants, and then further waves of industrial wares which we in America have come to depend on. Have the Chinese terrorized America? Stolen American jobs? Degraded American racial purity? Here in San Francisco, it seems obvious that the Chinese have been among the most valuable and assimilable immigrant populations ever. Their crime rate and public assistance rate are extremely low, and their employment rate is unmatched by any European American group. They've excelled in our public schools, raising the standards of performance for "white" students by their example of seriousness. They exceed the averages of European Americans in education, income, and marital stability. Their consumption of illegal drugs is far lower than that of white suburbanites. They are a major component of the thriving multi-culturalism that makes San Francisco the most desirable place to live in all the United States, as proven by housing prices.

America was built by immigrants, and then rebuilt again and again by later waves of immigrants, each time a richer and stronger culture. Those who blame problems on recent immigrants are wrong; they themselves are the problem.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars sadness spoken from the walls, April 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910-1940 (Paperback)

This is a collection of poetry salvaged from the walls of the barracks on Angel Island, where Chinese immigrants were detained between 1910 and 1940. Poems are in both English and Chinese. In addition to the poems, the editors provide an introduction to early Chinese immigration, and there are several pages of quotes from various immigrants, on various subjects such as the voyage to America and their impressions of Westerners. The poetry speaks for itself -- poems of desperation, despair, homesickness, and anger. This is a wonderful collection.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chinese poems on the wall, July 23, 2010

By 

Walter W. Ko "Walter Ko" (St Louis, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910-1940 (Paperback)

This book is an important chapter of American history on Chinese Immigration experience on angel Island 1910-40 after Congress passed 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, barring immigration based on race. The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake destroyed the records in city hall and many Chinese claimed to be native sons to petition for family members to come over known as "paper son". Angel Island Immigration Station was the facility to process admission by tedious interrogation in fenced barracks. This book collects the 69 poems marked on the walls in bilingual text.
The introduction gave a detail background information so that reader will have a comprehensive understanding of the Chinese in America in that period, subject to discrimination, abuse and violence. Contrary to Ellis Island where Statue of Liberty welcomes immigrants, Chinese arriving the land of free lost their freedom in Angel Island. Facing uncertainty, many waited anxiously for their luck. It is amazing to see this group of Chinese detainees despised and sanctioned as the coolie class from a great Confucius tradition left their poems on the the wall without riot and violence. These poems expressed their frustration, anger, homesick, complaints and unfair treatment in a creative way.
There are sections on interviews for the recollection of the angel Island experiences by detainees, workers and volunteers. The memories brought a cross section on the life in Angel Island. In economic hard times, politicians looked for scapegoat to blame. Police could check, arrest and deport anyone suspicious of being illegal alien. The 110,000 Chinese refused to carry photo identity cards by launching the largest massive civil disobedience in US history in 1892. History repeated itself in Arizona in 2010 with same police authority.
Angel Island Immigration Station had the re-opening celebration in 2009. The restored building, the interrogation room with old typewriter and old fashion phone and actor of Katherine Maurer, known as Angel of Angel Island reminded of a bygone era. The poems are visible on the wall. I read in memory and respect of the unknown artists. The common theme centered on the confinement and bitterness that a weak motherland could not help and protect them. It was their high hope that one day a modern strong and power China will bring them justice.
While many poets expressed their sorrow and sadness especially upon receiving the bad news of deportation, I picked the favorite one that was to bid farewell to the barrack detainees for a new American life. (P.134 and the Chinese text on front cover)
Detained in this wooden house for several tens of days, it is all because of the Mexican exclusion law which implicates me. It is a pity heroes have no way of exercising their prowess. I can only await the word so that I can snap Zu's whip.
From now on, I am departing far from this building. all of my fellow villagers are rejoicing with me. Don't say that everything within is Western styled. Even if it is built of jade, it has turned into a cage.
This book reminded us this group of able hard workers whose fathers, uncles and cousins came to work in the mines of California gold mountains, in transcontinental railways and in agricultural fields. The detainees condensed their tears and voices on the walls in the barracks in Angel Island. On July 31 2010, there will be a Centennial Celebration on the Station. This group of unknown detainee artists would have a front-row seat, smiling down from heaven that their suffering and sacrifice paid off and their dreams came true. This book in collecting their masterpieces is an honorable tribute memorial.