When I first started researching Angel Island as part of a personal project, I wasn’t expecting much. Very few primary sources have been left behind by those who passed through Angel Island. Most Chinese immigrants during the Exclusion era, when Angel Island was active, were illiterate. Those who were literate often had limited access to writing materials, didn’t preserve their writing, and produced work that remains untranslated. Yet, I found a wealth of knowledge about Asian-American history translated through one medium: poetry. “Abandoning wife and child, I crossed an entire ocean.
I do not know how much wind and frost I’ve
Weathered; it was because my family was poor
That I searched for the white jade.
Bidding farewell to relatives and friends, I drifted
…show more content…
It is difficult to keep track of all the
Rain and snow I have endured; it is all due to a
Harsh purse with a reverence for copper coins.”
-Written by an anonymous immigrant on Angel Island, from “Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940” by Him Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung Hundreds of thousands of poems were scrawled on the walls of Angel Island, the immigration processing center that prevented Chinese entry during the Exclusion era. Through these poems, a resounding message of a mixture of anger, bitterness, sorrow, and hope was expressed. Most were sloppily written by barely literate Chinese farmers, but the impact of them is still great. These poems discussed factors leading to immigration, such as poverty, arranged marriages through the “picture bride” system, and ambition. They communicated to historians the complex and differing stories of immigrants bravely facing a new world of American Sinophobia and Yellow Peril, allowing a more complex analysis of Asian-American history. These poems, alone, have shaped much of our modern understanding of early Asian
Chapter six examines the anti-Chinese sentiment with the emerging class antagonism and turmoil between white capitalists and workers. The unwelcomed arrival of Chinese immigrants brought along their own social organizations such as the huiguan, fongs, and tongs. These types of social organizations secured areas of employment and housing for Chinese immigrants in California. This social structure that was unknown to Anglos led them to also categorize Chinese on the same level as Indians by depicting them as lustful heathens whom were out to taint innocent white women. These images were also perpetuated onto Chinese women, thus, also sexualizing them as all prostitutes.
In Julie Otsuka’s novel, When the Emperor was Divine, a nameless Japanese-American family is uprooted, exported, and abandoned by their own government. The family, along with thousands of others, lived in an internment camp for the duration of World War II, their only crime being their Japanese heritage. All Americans should know the story well, however, beyond public knowledge, there is a hidden history of Japanese-American imprisonment that extends beyond the less malicious internment of families. It is kept in the dark, easily overlooked, only found when one is willing to search.
European immigrants coming through Ellis Island were questioned about their financial status and intentions in America, tested on their ability to read, given intelligence tests that were biased towards English-speakers, and given medical inspections. This entry process took at least a few hours and at most a few days. Asian immigrants in Angel Island were faced with longer entry acceptance due to interrogations with very specific questions that could take anywhere from a few days to even months. The Angel Island immigration center also held the purpose of deporting Chinese immigrants, which made interrogations much more intrusive and long-standing. Chinese Poetry: Gordon offers reflection on the history of the immigration of her ancestors, whereas the Chinese poetry is written by
One of this week’s readings focused on Ch. 5, “Caged Birds,” in Professor Lytle Hernandez’s book City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles, 1771-1965, and this chapter was particularly interesting because it further explained the development of immigration control in the United States. As a continuation from the last chapter, there was a huge emphasis in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Geary Act of 1892. This essentially prohibited Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States, as well as eventually requiring these people to comply with regulations. “Caged Birds” encapsulates the events afterwards, as the book heads well into the early-1900’s. The disenfranchisement of immigrants develops towards further exclusivity because “[by] 1917, Congress had banned all Asian immigration to the Unites States and also categorically prohibited all prostitutes, convicts, anarchists, epileptics, ‘lunatics,’ ‘
The experiences related and recorded in the novels The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Monkey Bridge by Lan Cao, and Obasan by Joy Kogawa give great insight to the internal and external struggles East-Asian immigrants face in the Western World, specifically Chinese-Americans, Vietnamese-Americans, and Japanese-Canadians. Although the situations have certainly improved since the mid twentieth century, many of the issues and struggles the characters in the novels face are still real and ever-expanding for over five percent of the U.S. population. To
Assimilation is usually meant to indicate what happens to immigrants in a new land. However, “rejection, loneliness, discrimination—these were the byproducts of living in the United States” (Ghymn 37). In Marilyn Chin’s essay on assimilation “How I Got That Name,” the speaker acquaints the readers how she got the American name “Marilyn.” The tension between the two cultures is evident, for the speaker is treated as “Model Minority.” Her race and ethnicity define her; in fact, the stereotypes inscribed with her race restricted and cage her significance in the society.
The poem mentions a flower, one that is “unsweetened by rain, untarnished by simpering, uncuckolded by men” (Maracle 156), pointing out to the reader that the flower is tenacious regardless of the situation that it is placed in. Maracle intentionally chooses a flower to represent the Chinese, as oftentimes a flower is symbolizes “strength and courageousness” (Koehn 1952) in chinese culture, revealing the respect that Maracle has for the Chinese. A discriminatory act upon the Chinese was the racial segregation into Chinatown during the time of the gold rush and the building of the railroad. Overtime, the segregation caused many Chinese to be silenced, fearing for their lives. Maracle chooses to dedicate the poem to Sky Lee and Jim Wong-Chu to show gratitude for the developments they have made towards encouraging the Chinese community to speak out against
The analysis of the young girl in “Lost Sister” is no doubt an effort to link Cathy Song’s two worlds together. Cathy Song wanted acceptance of her culture, using it as a release and that freedom is within. Song described life for young girls in China as restricted, disciplined and structured. Jade is the name that Song throughout the poem. It is a known fact that the Chinese culture values jade stone more than gold.
Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter Sweet is a historical fiction novel that takes place during the Japanese Internment of 1942. It centers n Henry Lee, a Chinese boy living with traditional Chinese parents and trying to grow up as a typical American kid in the U.S. during World War II. When he befriends a Japanese girl in the midst of the conflict, Henry soon discovers that navigating between the borders of cultures comes with many obstacles. The novel is a painful yet beautiful commentary of the racial separation in those times, capturing the struggles of both Japanese and Chinese Americans, along with a small look into African American’s lives as well. It tells the story of the horrible camps through the eyes of a young Chinese boy, which is an interesting perspective.
As the end of the poem approaches, Dawe justifies his positioning by informing the readers that the mother and children silently renounce their individual desires and accept the ‘drifter’ lifestyle in order to belong to the family in which they feel safe and loved. Dawe’s father was a farm labourer who moved from place to place to find employment. His mother longed for the stability in life that circumstances
‘The Good Earth’ and the Possibility of ‘Anti-Orientalist’ Orientalism In 1931, American author Pearl S. Buck published The Good Earth, an English-language novel depicting a peasant’s life in rural China. The novel was immediately a financial and critical success; after selling millions of copies, it would win the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. Buck’s writing was praised for its evenhanded and insightful portrayal of Chinese culture and society. Retrospectively, however, many scholars have criticized it as a well-intentioned but reductionist and Orientalist treatment of China. Using Said’s conception of Orientalism as an analytical framework, this essay examines and evaluates charges of Orientalism in The Good Earth.
The Thorough Breakdown of Poem Immigrants After reading and studying the poem “Immigrants” by Pat Mora, one can see and identify a few literary symbolisms that are used to express the fearful tone of the poem. This poems three literary symbols that can be seen are, a sense of pride, acceptance, and of course sacrifice. The tone of this poem show how much an immigrant has to sacrifice in this country, in order to gain acceptance and, therefore, be proud Americans. Although, they can’t ever stop being who they are, they must try and sacrifice their own culture in order to be Americans.
This report was commissioned by The Asian Education Foundation, to analyse the growing number of Asian texts being produced. This report will asses Family life, Resilience and the issue of Racism. Asian tests have had a large increase from the publishing of Anh Do’s autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. 2.0 Representations of growing up Asian in Australia 2.1 Family Life In the autobiography ‘The Happiest Refugee’, Do has a high regard for his family, that he illustrates throughout the memoir.
Tan expresses the life experiences of Chinese immigrants to the United States and attempts to depict the relationship of a mother and daughter through her significant piece of writing ‘The Joy Club’. Therefore, all these authors somehow portrayed their early struggles and their view point towards life from their literary
Read this quote from the text. “There I was, a ten-year-old orphan.…six years I lived like this…She told me about American men who wanted Asian wives. If I can cook, clean, and take care of my American husband, he’ll give me a good life. It was the only hope I had. No one understood me, and I understood nothing