Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940

by Him Mark Lai (Editor), Judy Yung, Genny Lim

Island records some of the earliest literary expressions of the Chinese in 135 poems written and carved into the barrack walls on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, where the immigrants were held for weeks and months while undergoing government scrutiny.  The period was 1910 to 1940, when Angel Island was known as the Ellis Island of the West.

The poems have been collected, translated, annotated, and organized into a beautifully designed two-color book that also contains photographs from the period and oral history interviews from people who lived through the frustrating and humiliating experience.  The poems are presented in their original Cantonese side by side with English translations.

This book is at once an important historical document and a significant work of literature.

Genres: Poetry, History, Nonfiction, China, Asian Literature, Asian American, School

174 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1980

Reviews

[Jenna]

A vital record of an important place and time in American history, this book presents English translations of over a hundred poems inked and engraved by Chinese immigrants on the walls of the detention center where they were confined -- often for months, sometimes even years -- when trying to immigrate to the U.S. in the early 20th century, shortly after a slight relaxation in the terms of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The poems are cries from the heart, by turns expressing disillusionment, regret, grief, humiliation, anger, political consciousness, desperation, resignation, worry, and filial love and yearning for relatives whom the poets had left behind in their homeland and with whom they had no means of communicating. Quite a few of the poems make note of data like dates, years, the names of hometowns, as if answering the universal human thirst to document and preserve. Many of the poems read like little pep talks, rattling off litanies of names of historical figures who had suffered -- and survived -- setbacks similar to the ones the detainees were experiencing in the present: "When Ziqing was in distant lands, who pitied and inquired after him? / When Ruan Ji reached the end of the road, he shed futile tears...." Reflecting on how so many of these detainees turned to anecdotes of real-life heroes from their national history to uplift their spirits in a trying time, I gained a deeper appreciation for why we teach and study history, the value of it.

Though written by a variety of authors, the pieces are tonally similar, seeming to blend at times into a single heartfelt collective utterance. Now and then, though, there are glimpses of personality: "Night and day, I sit passively and listlessly. / Fortunately, I have a novel as my companion." The final poem is a stark couplet, "said to be a commentary written the day after a detainee had hung himself": "I pray that the day you again enter the cycle of life / You'll not be a chap with a worthless life from a poor family."

[Angela · Rating 4 out of 5]

“For days I have been without freedom on Island.
In reduced circumstances now, I mingle with the prisoners.
Grievances fill my belly; I rely on poetry to express them.
A pile of clods bloats my chest, and I wash it down with wine.
Because my country is weak, I have become aware of the laws of growth and decay.
In pursuit of wealth, I have come to understand the principles of expansion and diminution.
When I am idle, I have this wild dream
That I have gained the Western barbarian’s consent to enter America” (Lai et al. 60)

60. Random Thoughts While Staying in the Building

The poems unearthed from the detention center at Angel Island are not merely written by and for Chinese immigrants, but also, in their etched form, call to the methods of physical and psychic exclusion central to the policing of Chinese immigration by the U.S. within the lifetime of the Exclusion Act. Without walls, this procession of detainees would have had no surface on which to leave a record of being trapped behind them. Indeed, enclosure arises as a throughline in these poems, where each enclosure is enclosed by a larger enclosure. One can imagine a Russian doll wherein every compartment colludes with the next to make the act of immigration, itself a breach of geopolitical compartments, impossible.

Unlike most of its counterparts, the poem selected for this close reading has a title, “Random Thoughts While Staying in the Building,” that establishes inside and outside as a key, thematic separation. Similarly to how the walls became the medium through which these poems were created, the existence of the building interior enabled the idleness of “staying” that gave rise to the “random thoughts” that comprise the poem. The barriers of the enclosure can be made of ocean as much as mortar: the poet begins by acknowledging “hav[ing] been [for days] without freedom on Island” (60.1). The use of Island as a proper noun specifies Angel Island as the site of the detainees’ confinement. In the tradition of Alcatraz and other island prisons, Angel Island’s watery surroundings exacerbate the “reduced circumstances” that abolished freedoms of entry and exit (60.2). Indeed, the poet refers to himself and his fellows as “prisoners,” implying that what they had in common — attempted immigration — amounted to a criminal offense (60.2). A criminal is detained after they breach the social contract. They are sequestered so they can no longer destabilize the public order. Parts defeated and sardonic, self-identification with prisoners situates the Chinese detainees somehow as a threat to the public safety of the host country, in need of being kept off the mainland. Already, images of stasis and restriction interact to establish two layers of containment involving the barracks and the Island: the former enclosing the people, the latter enclosing the former.

Yet, another container emerges as we fittingly move further into the belly of the poem. The stomach appears frequently throughout this poetry collective as “fill[ed with] grievances,” “discontent,” “hardships,” and “torment” (60.3, 9.7, 114.2, 114.7). The metaphorical foodstuff continues with a separate class of images including “tast[ing] waves,” “feeding on wind,” and “sleeping on dew” (7.5, 114.2). Amid the Chinese laborers who “hastened [to Angel Island] for the sake of [their] stomach,” likely none were ignorant to the irony of finding themselves full upon arrival with all but real food (103.1). The gastrointestinal tract becomes a closed container: a holding place for growing realizations of the injustice of their situations. The more empty the stomach is of food, the fuller it is of intangible disappointments that worsen the detainees’ hunger to bypass the separations into a place where they could be fed. Interestingly, what poetry does for a stomach full of “grievances” parallels what wine does for a chest “bloat[ed]” with “a pile of clods” (60.3-4). Just as wine can “wash down” the congested esophagus, poetry-writing is used to process the metaphorical gastric overwhelm of their new custody. As much as movement is restricted, however, chemistry occurs in the “mingl[ing]” of “prisoners” as much as it does in the digestion of foodstuffs by the stomach. In interacting within the enclosure, in etching poems into its architecture, the detainees are enabled by this compulsory proximity to create the crosstalk that will become a shared history.

We are made aware of this history as the poem’s latter half shifts its attention from the microsocial, physiological day-to-day of containment into the larger geopolitical shifts that gave rise to this culture of racially motivated exclusion. The poet is conscious of China’s “decay,” which served as the impetus for him — and many others — to seek economic “growth” abroad (60.5). The movements of immigration are mapped onto economic cycles of boom and bust, underscoring the material aspirations as a factor in their immigration. The poet demonstrates a profound epistemological awareness of the “laws” and “principles” of his world (60.5, 60.6). In his pursuit of “expansion,” he finds himself instead confined to an enclosure that mirrors the experiences of “diminution” in the homeland he left (60.6). Kept in the barracks and out of America, he transitions again into the “idle” state that has brought about the foundational “wild dream” of the poem: “I have gained the Western barbarian’s consent to enter America” (60.7-8). This euphemistic desire, involving consent and entry, points to a desire to procreate and establish a legacy in new soil. Having briefly been made aware of the detainees’ spatiotemporal placement at the poem’s beginning, we return to the geopolitics of their confinement now that the truth of the poem has been made plain. In immigrating to America, the detainees had hoped to escape the simple clutch of hunger. Yet, as the poem develops, they find themselves in a much more complex enclosure — a product of anti-Chinese sentiment, labor tensions, and exclusion policies engineered by the U.S. government.

Over this poem, we begin with an easy, organic container that operates on predictable cycles of fasting and feeding. We then find the stomach to be enclosed in the barracks, a man-made building operating on the uncertain timeline of an immigration station. Then, we find that the barracks are stationed deliberately on Angel Island to indefinitely sustain this multilayered project of sociopolitical exclusion. Taken together, the enclosures that appear in the poetry of Angel Island speak vividly to the multifarious entrapment of Chinese immigrants and how instrumental the imagery of containment and exclusion was to the policies that enabled it.

[Ted Manahan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Historically important, and if you read Chinese, it would be instructive to compare the original poems with the translation.

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lucked into a used copy of this book, autographed by all three authors.

Details the history of Chinese immigrants who landed at Angel Island while waiting to enter the US. Some were deported, some stayed short periods of time, some stayed long, and their stay was contrasted with the Japanese or Italians entering the company.

Pictures, interviews, background and poems in Chinese and translated to English.....the poor Chinese finding the food and shelter to be better than home...Others finding the conditions deplorable.

The use of "coaching" papers and paper relatives....Not so long ago that I don't recall my dad trying to help new immigrants, but soon to be lost with my generation's passing.

[Kailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Angel Island is never mentioned in schools, but it is just as important as Ellis Island in the history of immigration to the US. The immigration station, which operated from 1910-1940, mainly detained Chinese immigrants, many of whom had to resort to using fraudulent papers to enter the country, and escape poverty and unrest in China, because of the Chinese Exclusion Act. This book contains the poems that immigrants carved into the walls of the detention barracks, as well as oral histories from interviews with former detainees. This book gave a voice to the Chinese immigrants who suffered injustice and racism on Angel Island, and is necessary reading for anyone interested in US immigration history or the history of the Chinese in America.

[Adam Cummings · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome collection of primary sources—poems written on the walls at Angel Island depicting an immense range of feelings about the move from China to the U.S. some deeply saddening, others commendable in their optimism.
I use some of these poems when teaching about immigration on the West coast US. Amazing primary sources very useful in teaching and can add a great deal to research.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish I had known about the recent edition. For a first edition it is outstanding. I just wish there was more then just the introduction for the editors to provide information on the interviews and poems.

[behsforensics]

Cutting is for Angel Island – Words from
the Barracks
Poetry translated by Genny Lim

[Maureen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have used this book to introduce my students to the experience of the Chinese immigrants who entered this country throught Angel Island. The tragic story of the detention of these immigrants has not been studied by elementary students as comprehensively as the history of the Ellis Island immigrants. The poetry that was found on the walls of Angel Island conveys the despair and desperation of the detainees when they finally did arrive in America. I often read this poetry to compare and contrast the poem of Emma Lazarus on the base of the Statue of Liberty. It is a powerful learning experience and illustrates the disparity between the hope symbolized by America's most famous landmark and the actual experience of those whose first American experience was one of humiliation and persecution.

[John Jung · Rating 5 out of 5]

anthology of poems carved onto walls of the detention center by Chinese immigrants on Angel Island between 1910 and 1940. Discovered by a park ranger just before the barracks were about to be demolished, these poems, which are a testament of the hardships and alienation of these detained immigrants, have been restored and translated.

[David Marxer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I'm not a poetry fan, I did enjoy this book as a companion to others about Angel Island. The oral history at the end of each chapter was good and I found the notes in the poems themselves most useful. The reader feels that not only were these poets steeped in their own anicent history, but also just how human they were.

[Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gut wrenching and heart breaking