Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940 (Naomi B. Pascal Editor's Endowment)

This is a beautiful compilation of poignant,poetry written by detainees while held at the Angel Island immigration center in San Francisco. It also personal histories of some of the detainees at the end of the book. This is a must-have for the library of anyone interested in U.S. immigration or Asian American history.

"Island" is the best and most comprehensive book featuring the carved Chinese poems at the AIIS (Angel Island Immigration Station).

a great book on immigrant to the US and history of their life through their writing.

With this second, enlarged edition of "ISLAND" Professor Emerita Judy Yung and key colleagues have added a precious component to her one volume definitive history of Angel Island published in 2010 with co-author Dr. Erika Lee. The original 1991 "Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940" by Yung, Jenny Lim and deceased historian Him Mark Lai remains a poignant collection of very personal poems actually carved by immigrant prisoners into the very walls of their cells during overlong incarcerations at the island prison. Arriving at "Gold Mountain" to seek their places within America most were incarcerated for months and occasionally years. That was due to institutionally systemized racism not experienced by any other foreign arrivals to such a broad degree for nearly half a century. Among thousands of crime-less victims who were caged for days, months or years of waiting, many felt compelled eventually to compose as poetry their innermost thoughts of frustration, anger and deep bitterness. Many of them then scored those anxieties into Angel Island detention center walls for those similarly following them to read. With this second edition of ISLAND poetry Dr. Yung has now included a series of powerful and touching, personal interviews recorded many years after the person's incarceration. In these oral histories the fundamentally innocent Chinese ex-inmates spoke of their tribulations and also of their eventually successful lives, careers, and/or families. They also reflected philosophically upon their soul numbing time spent behind those Island bars and within large cages. This despite their strictly enforced confinement at Angel Island near San Francisco Bay's even more infamous Alcatraz Island and its truly dangerous and incorrigible, federal convicts. This second, significantly expanded and thorough edition of ISLAND also offers levels of closure within a selection of after stories as related to original ISLAND authors Judy Yung and Him Mark Lai. Author Yung has also added similar Chinese poems left by Ellis Island detainees in New York Harbor as well as some from British Colombia's likewise detained Chinese immigrants. Equally revealing herein is a detailed 1975 oral history that the authors collected from a former, caucasian Immigration Service clerk who worked for several years with Chinese immigrants at Angel Island. This excellent book is a must for students or scholars of Chinese American history and especially for anyone of Chinese American heritage.

Am privileged to do docent tours at the Angel Immigration Station for the California State Park on Angel Island for elementary, high school and college folks.This book will really be so wonderfully used to contextualize the many poems that were shared in the first Island edition to real life situations. Thank you for the painstaking work for collecting the pictures that have been scattered..(especially on my iPAD)....Thank you for this GREAT update!