History Of Chinese Immigrants Research Articles

Assimilation or Detention

How are the migration of people and of poetry, through literary translation and translational literature, linked or alike? What can the poetry of migration teach about the translation of form in poetry? What is the role of the text in understanding the politics of poetry in politicized contexts? Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940 is an important collection and translation of poems etched in the walls of the Angel Island detention center. Though the Angel Island poems were mostly composed after the 1919 vernacular revolution in Chinese literature, they were written in classical Chinese and premodern forms. Island translates them into stiff free-verse academic English, asking English-language readers to imaginatively project poetic beauty onto the originals. Other translations, such as Teow Lim Goh's Islanders (2016) and Jeffrey Thomas Leong's Wild Geese Sorrow (2018), render the poems with more attention to the dominant styles of contemporary American poetry. This article argues for a retranslation of the Angel Island poems—not into free verse but with formalist attention to meter and rhyme in English. Such translations could blur the dichotomy between the former's target-oriented poetics and the latter's source-oriented translations and also offer a stronger migration into English for the poetry of these migrants.

From Discrimination to Integration: A History of Chinese Immigration in Canada

From Discrimination to Integration: A History of Chinese Immigration in Canada

Digital preservation, social history, and the Quon Sang Lung Laundry building: a case study from Fort Macleod, Alberta, Canada

Social history focuses on understanding the everyday lives of ordinary people (Richardson 2011, Social history, local history, and historiography: collected essays). The ethnic minorities that made up immigrant communities in North American towns and cities during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been of particular interest to social historians (Tosh 2017, From the ‘cape of despair’ to the Cape of Good Hope: letters of the emigrant poor in early nineteenth-century England. Social History 42:480–500). However, language barriers and low rates of literacy often limit the number of first person accounts written by people who belonged to such communities. This paper explores how terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) and 3D reconstructive modeling of heritage buildings can provide new insights into the social history of Chinese immigrants in Alberta during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These technologies were used to rapidly and accurately document the Quon Sang Lung Laundry shop in Fort Macleod, Alberta, prior to its scheduled demolition. The resulting digital data sets were used to construct detailed architectural plans of the building, as well as photorealistic 3D reconstructions of the shop, as it would have appeared at different points in history. The resulting point clouds were further explored to detect and extract evidence of the lived experiences of its occupants. For example, the conflicts and tensions surrounding Chinese laundries, and the discriminatory bylaws that resulted, may be subtly reflected in specific architectural details of the laundry shop, such as evidence for the presence of walls no longer standing. The ability to return to accurate digital models, over and over again, provides unique opportunities to construct social histories of buildings long after they are gone.

Mexican Lawlessness: Genocide and Massacre in Julián Herbert’s La casa del dolor ajeno

Author(s): Janzen, Rebecca | Abstract: This article examines Julian Herbert’s La casa del dolor ajeno: cronica de un pequeno genocidio en La Laguna (2015), which deals with a massacre of 300 Chinese people in Torreon, Mexico, in 1911. This cronica in novelized form weaves together the history of Chinese immigration to Mexico with contemporary violence and the author’s own experiences of research and writing. I bring Herbert’s imaginative interpretation of the past into conversation with the Mexican Constitution and penal codes that were in force during the massacre, and at the time Herbert was writing. I compare his treatment of the initial reports to late 19th and early 20th-century ideas of a right to life, work and citizenship and relate his 21st-century reflections to 20th century concepts of genocide. The article concludes that this weaving together of past and present exposes the violence of capitalism that preys on vulnerable people.

Righting Canada’s Wrongs: The Chinese Head Tax and Anti-Chinese Immigration Policies in the Twentieth Century by A. Chan

Chan, Arlene. Righting Canada’s Wrongs: The Chinese Head Tax and Anti-Chinese Immigration Policies in the Twentieth Century. Toronto: James Lorimer & Company Ltd., 2014. Print.This is a non-fiction book about the history of Chinese immigration and settlement in Canada. It takes the reader through a very long historical period that starts from the time the Chinese first stepped foot in Canada in the eighteenth century, through struggling under racial discrimination in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to attaining redress and public apology as captured in the title “Righting Canada’s Wrongs”.The title suggests a very serious topic that may not appeal to some readers looking to read for pleasure. However, this is an excellent resource for students doing a school or family genealogy project, or for those with an inquisitive mind. Once the book is opened, the photographs will definitely catch the attention and spark the interest of the reader. The author has skillfully used over 200 rare archival and modern day photographs and real-life audio accounts to make this book into an educational and thought-provoking audio-visual historical document. The only drawback is that the reader has to go back and forth between reading the book and going online to listen to the audio. While the book gives a good account of Chinese Canadian history, it missed the struggles and successes of the Prairie Chinese whose experiences are well-captured in the rich collection of rare archival materials housed in the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library of the University of Alberta, the Glenbow Museum, and the Edmonton Archives.The first chapter introduces the reader to the story by providing a brief historical background. Young readers may not be familiar with the two Opium Wars, British Columbia joining the Canadian Confederation, the First and Second World Wars, and the Chinese head tax redress campaign. Therefore, it will be very helpful if these events can all be put into historical perspectives by specifying the year of occurrence. The back of the book contains valuable references, such as: a “Timeline” diagram, a Glossary, a list of suggested reading, a list of visual credits, and an index to aid the readers. The “Timeline” diagram effectively chronicles significant historical events relevant to the story being told. However, it is inaccurate to say that Hong Kong becomes a British Colony in 1898. Hong Kong is a general name to mean the Island of Hong Kong and its surrounding islets, the Kowloon Peninsula, and the New Territories. Historically, Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain in 1842, the Kowloon Peninsula ceded in 1860, and the New Territories leased for 99 years from 1898 to 1997. A similar inaccuracy is in the caption for a photograph on page 52 taken in Kowloon. At that point in history, it was a British Colony and not a part of China. This book is more suitable for young readers of grade five and above. They will get more out of reading this book if they are guided by parents or teachers who can help them better understand and appreciate the complex issues and historical occurrences. Recommended: 3 out of 4 starsReviewer: Helen Kwan Yee CheungHelen Kwan Yee Cheung has a B.Soc.Sc. from the University of Hong Kong and an MA from the University of Alberta. She has a diverse background of business, social work, psychology, personnel, and intergovernmental relations, having worked in the provincial and federal public service for twenty-five years. She has curated an exhibition “Painted Faces on the Prairies” for the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library of the University of Alberta in 2014 and currently working on a second project about Chinese merchants in the Canadian West as the Library’s guest curator.

Island: poetry and history of Chinese immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940

Island: poetry and history of Chinese immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940

Messengers from the US-Chinese Past

Messengers from the US-Chinese Past Elena Barabantseva The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority by Madeline Y. Hsu. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. Pp. viii + 335. $35.00 cloth, $35.00 e-book. Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910–1940 edited by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung. Second edition. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2014. Pp. xiv + 368. $30.00, paper. Eurasian: Mixed Identities in the United States, China, and Hong Kong, 1842–1943 by Emma Jinhua Teng. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013. Pp. xvii + 331. $29.95 paper, $29.95 e-book. Chinese and Americans: A Shared History by Xu Guoqi. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014. Pp. xiii + 332. $39.95. What matters in accounts of shared history? Whose stories should be included and count as history? The four books under review in this essay speak to these questions in distinct ways, but often refer to the same people, events, regions, and places. These studies differ in their analytical scope, subjects of inquiry, and sources, yet follow a similar research trajectory, focusing on informal contacts, marginalized experiences, and familial relations linking the United States and China. [End Page 441] Through the analysis of people-to-people relations in particular political contexts, the books show how political discourses and agendas in the two countries marked and shaped human experiences relating to citizenship and rights, law, identity, and social values. Relations between China and the United States changed during the late nineteenth century. In China, a growing interest in Western learning and technology preceded the antiforeignism of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. In the US, until antimiscegenation laws and the Chinese Exclusion Act were passed in the 1880s, curiosity, fascination, and openness to a different culture and philosophy of life dominated national sentiments toward Chinese. This is the historical juncture at which the analyses in the four books start. In Chinese and Americans, Xu Guoqi examines newly discovered private letters and documentation tracing the legacy of personalities and cultural and educational initiatives that shaped the historical trajectory of the US and China’s bilateral relations. Emma Jinhua Teng’s Eurasian traces the life stories of mixed-race couples and their families across the Pacific. Madeline Hsu’s The Good Immigrants looks at the changing status of the Chinese student immigrant population in the US from their relative exclusion to their celebration as a “model minority.” Island assembles the poetic and oral-history legacy of Chinese migrants detained on Angel Island off the coast of San Francisco, which served as an immigration processing facility during the early twentieth century. The Fragments of Chinese-American History In Chinese and Americans, Xu explores “cultural internationalism” as a theme in the history of the US and China through the life stories and legacies of prominent individuals. He is interested in popular exchanges in the context of formal interstate relations, with a focus on “shared dreams, hopes and frustrations, excitements and disappointments” (p. 2). He distinguishes his approach from the state-centered accounts of US-China relations that dominate the field of diplomatic history. Through an account of people-to-people relations in the areas of cultural and educational exchanges, he paints a nuanced history of [End Page 442] US-China relations, reaching the conclusion that China’s strong desire for internationalization has been countered by the determined efforts of the West to “shut out” the Chinese (p. 206). If there is one central figure whose life and work left a significant mark on the joint history of the US and China—and thus created space to tell the stories in these four books—it is Anson Burlingame, one of the characters discussed in Xu’s Chinese and Americans. Xu meticulously takes the reader through the main events of Burlingame’s career and his lifelong efforts to serve as an envoy between the two states. After the violent opening of China to the world following the Opium War—at a time when the Qing court refused to send resident ministers abroad—Burlingame became China’s first...

CHINESES NO RIO DE JANEIRO: O século XX e a migração em massa

From 1850, the immigration has come to play a central role in Brazilian history as well as the year 1812, a largely unknown fact, has recorded the first free work experience: the import of Chinese people to work in the tea plantations. Since then, the immigration of these populations had been growing and it has become the main foreign contingent in Brazil throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Complementing a previous article about the history of Chinese immigration until the nineteenth century, which has published in 2011, this paper aims to discuss the socially created images and ethnic prejudices which had felt (and they have still remain) on these “new Brazilian people".

Colonial Origins of the Informal Economy on the Gazelle Peninsula

This paper is concerned with the accommodation to the market economy of Tolai people, indigenous to the Gazelle Peninsula in Papua New Guinea and regarded as one of the most prosperous and enterprising groups in the country. 'The market' was introduced to Tolai by German (and later, Australian) colonists from the late nineteenth century. Without pretension to novelty in the historical narrative it asserts the value of viewing these events through the lens of 'informal economy', as constructed by Keith Hart. The paper is a companion piece to another study, concerned with the economic history of Chinese immigrants to Rabaul (Conroy, forthcoming). Starting from the proposition that (unlike the Chinese) the Tolai had no tradition of 'trade as a self-sufficient profession', it considers how they adapted their livelihoods to the colonial economy. In German New Guinea, market economic activity was supposed to be conducted in conformity with the norms of a particular model of Weberian 'rational-legal' bureaucracy, introduced by the Reich. In turn, German bureaucratic norms were guided by an ideology of 'national-economic purpose', enunciated for the Wilhelmine state and its colonies. The paper argues that subsequent Australian administrators adopted the German bureaucratic framework, while employing it initially for somewhat different ends and eventually (after World War II) adapting it to the needs of a new ideology of 'economic development'. Across this long period Tolai engagement in the market economy proved to be 'informal', in the sense that it did not conform fully with prescribed bureaucratic norms. It displayed the hybridity found wherever Smithian trade (seen as activated by a natural human tendency to 'truck and barter') is confronted by Maussian exchange (seen as the product of socially regulated customs). The paper considers how tensions between German/Australian expectations of Tolai economic behaviour and the reality of that behaviour played out over the colonial period to 1975. At the end of that time, trade as 'a self-sufficient profession' appeared to be confined to some instances of petty specialized trade amid signs of more general emerging change in trading culture.

Chinese descendants in Italy: emergence, role and uncertain identity

The history of Chinese immigration in Italy is about a century old, but numbers have become consistent in the last decades and the emergence of new generations is a recent phenomenon. This article examines the growing role of Chinese descendants in the country (within Chinese enterprises and new forms of interaction with the mainstream society) and their processes of identity formation, focusing the attention on the role played by Italian society and the dominant prejudices about this ethnic minority. The study highlights the relevance of social exclusion and identity prescription, as well as the importance of class, in determining different feelings of belonging and processes of identification. While a minority of middle-class Chinese have identified with Italy and developed a new hyphenated identity, many Chinese from the lower class appear uncertain about their national identity and react to social exclusion by abandoning hope and dropping out of education.

Chinese Ethnic Settlements in Britain: Spatial Meanings of an Orderly Distribution, 1981–2001

This paper focuses on Chinese immigration and its spatial manifestations in Britain in the past two decades. The 1980s can be recorded as a turning-point in the history of Chinese immigration to Britain, marking a substantial increase in the number and diversity of Chinese immigrants. The same decade should also be considered a landmark in contemporary British urban history, as it featured a major transformation in the Chinese urban landscape. Systematic analyses of census data reveal that, since the 1980s, Chinese immigration to Britain has undergone a process of dramatic structural transformation that has facilitated the decentralisation of the Chinatown enclave economy and the spatial diffusion of Chinese residents. The spatial configuration of ‘new-wave’ immigration has been a regular rank-size relationship of residential distributions. This urban system contains many small and diffused clusters, a lesser number of medium-size Chinatowns, but a few large Chinatowns. The systematic distribution of different Chinese settlements signifies the Chinese representation in different industrial sectors, as well as the equilibrium outcome of the organisational forces of these sectors.

The Chinese Must Go

Some labor historians and social historians of race are tempted to try to explain Chinese American racial oppression in the US purely by appeal to economic factors, especially the role that Chinese American men played in the US labor market. In this essay, I argue that such reduction is not possible. I briefly describe the history of Chinese immigration to the US, focusing on key changes in US law governing immigration and citizenship as they affected the Chinese. I then refute two economic reductionist views of Chinese American racial oppression. I conclude by suggesting a third, alternative understanding of this oppression that appeals to economic factors among others.

A History of Chinese Immigration in the United States and Canada

Introduction The transformation from an industrial to a high-tech, postindustrial economy in North America has had the effect of changing the way in which the governments of Canada and the United States view immigrants and visitors from China and other countries with substantial ethnic Chinese populations. Given the greater size of Canada's welfare system, that country's need for hard-working, well-educated, entrepreneurial, young immigrants is greater than that of the United States, but both countries are actively recruiting newcomers from the Chinese mainland. The current warm welcome to the shores of North America stands in sharp contrast to the efforts by the U.S. Congress and the Canadian Parliament in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to bar Chinese entirely This article summarizes the history of the disparate treatment Chinese have received in North America and seeks to explain variations in treatment between the two countries, each founded by settlers from the British Isles, France, and other countries in Western Europe. Trends in 19th-Century Immigration from China In 2004, there were approximately one million ethnic Chinese living in Canada and three million in the United States. Chinese are the largest visible minority in Canada, accounting for almost 4 percent of the population. The first immigrants from China arrived in British North America in the 1780s and the United States in the 1820s. They were mostly men, and their numbers were relatively small. In the 1850s, however, much larger numbers began to arrive in the United States and Canada from China. There was both a push factor and a pull factor. The pull factor was the discovery of gold in California in 1849. During the period 1851-1860 more than 40,000 Chinese entered the United States. The push factor was an increase in political and economic instability in southern China due to the Taiping Rebellion, the Opium Wars, and the inability of the Chinese government to maintain peace and order. The discovery of gold in the British colony of British Columbia in 1858 took some of that international migration north, drawing thousands of Chinese directly from China as well as from California. In 1858, China and the United States signed the Treaty of Tientsin. Under the terms of that one-sided deal, China agreed to prohibit permanent emigration to the United States. The treaty was not abrogated until 1959. The construction of railroads in the 1860s was an even larger attraction than the California Gold Rush. Thousands of men signed prepaid labor contracts that included free transoceanic passage to the West Coast of the United States. The president and the Senate encouraged and facilitated this immigration by approval of the Burlingame Treaty of 1868. More than half of the immigrants during this period came from Guandong Province's Taishan County. These immigrants were poor, came from rural areas, and spoke the Cantonese dialect of Chinese. The labor contracts typically were for five years, and the Chinese who signed them intended to return to China after their sojourn in the United States. Thousands of Chinese labored to build the western half of the Central Pacific Railroad, completed in 1869. Of the Chinese immigrants drawn to what is now Canada, many came through the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong, adjoining Guandong Province. They, too, were destined for rail work. The Canadian Confederation came into being in 1867, when four eastern colonies agreed to form Canada; and just four years later British Columbia agreed to join the new confederation on the condition that Canada build a transcontinental railroad linking western and eastern Canada. Sir John A. Macdonald, the prime minister of Canada at that time, insisted that the government employ laborers from China to construct the railroad in order to reduce costs. The railways paid Chinese laborers only one-fifth of what they paid white workers for the same work. …

Citizenship, economy and social exclusion of mainland Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is often viewed as a Chinese immigrants' city. This article discusses three interrelated dimensions of the social exclusion of migrants designated as “new” Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong. First, it is argued that globalisation has triggered intense economic rivalry among world cities as they undertake economic restructuring. Second, the political attempts of territorial states to establish their own legitimacy and strengthen their governing capacity are major catalysts that induce the social exclusion of immigrants. Third, the nature and strength of local place-based social identity is vital to determine the difficulties new immigrants face in being included in the host society. After recounting the history of Chinese immigrants and their recent profile in Hong Kong, the article examines the relationships between Hong Kong's economic development and the state's immigration policies, and how Hong Kong's state policies have constructed a form of Hong Kong identity vis-à-vis Mainland Chinese, drawing out the mechanisms that determine the social exclusion of Mainland immigrants since the 1990s. “We asked for workers but human beings came.” Max Frisch(quoted in Hollifield,2000:149)

Capitalizing the big man: Yao Ming, Asian America, and the China Global1

In summer 2002, Yao Ming, the Chinese basketball player from Shanghai, was drafted by the Houston Rockets as the overall first‐pick. His advent to the NBA quickly brought about a phenomenal impact, both economically and culturally. He was not only voted by the fans to the All‐Star game and replaced Shaquille O'Neal as one of the starting five in the Western Conference team, but also boosted the ticket sales of the Rockets' game to an increasing Asian American spectatorship. Instantly, he is more than the ‘little giant’ from China, but the great ‘yellow hope’ for Asian Pacific Americans — representing the ‘Chinese’ and the Chinese market in the age of globalization. Considering entertainment sports as a distinct place for transnational labour and commodity transactions, this paper takes Yao and his proliferating cultural economic impact as an occasion to analyse and critique the China Global as a national‐capitalist fantasy that is materialized at the expense of ‘stylized’ bodies. Acknowledging, although not endorsing, Julianne Malveaux's crude metaphor of basketball plantation, this paper suggests that Yao articulates a different mode of global capitalism than that represented by Michael Jordan in the 1990s. This mode of global capitalism is not so much about the labour of conquest as epitomized by black athletes, but about the attraction of the market and the availability of labour supply as inscribed in the history of Chinese immigration. The American dream of Yao, ultimately, is the capitalist and nationalist desire for ‘bigness’.

A Witness to the History of Chinese Immigrants in the United States: An Interview with jade Snow Wong in Nanjing, 2002/4/17

A Witness to the History of Chinese Immigrants in the United States: An Interview with jade Snow Wong in Nanjing, 2002/4/17

The Gendered Biopolitics of Marriage and Immigration: A Study of Pre-1949 Chinese Immigrants in Thailand

This first attempt to include women in the pre-1949 history of Chinese immigration to Thailand examines the dialectical relationship between immigration and marital practices through a gender lens. It is argued that labour immigration is not simply an economic endeavour, but rather a complex process of cultural production in which Thai and Chinese regimes compete to produce gendered citizens.

Ethnicity and Entreprenuership: The New Chinese Immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area.

1.Introduction. Ethnicity and Economic Adaptation. 2.From China to San Francisco. The History of Chinese Immigration. The New and Old Immigrants: A Contrast. The Chinese in the San Francisco Bay Area. Residential Patterns. Chinatown: The Symbolic and Cultural Center. Chinese Associations. Chinatown as a Center of Ethnic Resources. 3.Who are the New Chinese Immigrants? The Sources of the New Chinese Immigration. Mainland China: Immigration Enthusiasm. The Uncertain Future of Hong Kong: 1997 and Beyond. Taiwan: Is There a Future? Educational and Occupational Backgrounds of the New Immigrants. Economic Resources of the New Immigrants. 4.Economic Challenges and Responses for the New Immigrants. Economic Opportunity for the New Immigrants. The Ethnic Niche of the Chinese. Engineers, Educators, and Entrepreneurs. 5.Family and Traditional Values: The Bedrock of Chinese Business. The Role of Kinship in Chinese Business. Family Members as Employers and Employees. Confucianism, Traditions, and Business. Business Continuity. 6.Global Strategies of Chinese Professionals and Businessmen. The Astronaut Trend. Global Business Strategies. The Establishment of an International Trading Network. Returning Home for Business. Transnational Workers: Other Countries. Conclusion. 7.Survival and Adaptation in Modern America. Contributions of the New Chinese Immigrants. Politics and the New Immigrants. Establishing Roots and Identities in America. Conclusions: Economic Adaptation and Ethnicity. References.

Anonymity and Self-Laceration in Early Twentieth Century Chinese Immigrant Writing

am ashamed to be curled up like a worm on Island. I grieve for my native land but what else can I say?(1) Marion K. Hom's award-winning Songs of Gold Mountain (1987) and revised edition of Lai, Lim and Yung's Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island (1991) offer important perspectives by Asians who, suppressed on America's west coast in first half of twentieth century, had much to say about their experiences. Written mostly during time of active anti-Chinese laws, anonymous works presented in both texts give voice to sense of Asian persecution and imposed self-effacement that also incorrectly confirmed white American view of their authors as members of an inscrutable and silent minority.(2) The authors probably never intended their writing to showcase literary merit; rather, their concerns included expressing directly pain of immigration and unlikely acceptance in new country and, in this way, their writing documented personal knowledge of what happened to them. The lament in much of the-writing depicts hopelessness to which so many succumbed during this period; their shame and despair sometimes culminated in suicide or other acts of self-destruction. The physical conditions described in writing correspond to a growing emotional anguish of authors' exilic state, and their revelations offer a glimpse into formidable self-laceration which characterized their experiences. Importantly, act of writing compelled authors to note their helplessness and, at same time, urged towards self-reliance and dignity. Ironically, then, Chinese immigrants of this period embraced attributes, such as fierce independence and tenacity of spirit, also valued by same white community which espoused exclusion of the yellows. The recovery of both sets of writings is worth noting, since translation and publication of anonymous pieces reveal interesting tensions which authors probably had not intended. In other words, not wishing to disclose their pain to a public audience out of shame or pride, authors nevertheless produced important historical knowledge of their lives as immigrants. Not intending to identify themselves in writing, they managed to speak their private anguish to an immediate audience, as well as a future one they never anticipated. The Angel Island poems were, literally, writings made on walls by immigrants who recorded the impressions of their voyage to America, their longing for families back home, and their outrage and humiliation at treatment America accorded them (8). Held in wooden barracks at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, newly arrived immigrants were detained for unspecified periods of time ranging from a few weeks to months until their immigration papers and medical examinations yielded either a favorable outcome or their deportation.(3) In this period of waiting, detainees marked walls with their thoughts, yearnings, and anguish. Interspersed with interviews of survivors conducted and presented by editors under condition of anonymity, Island also provides explanatory footnotes for colloquial expression and culturally specific references; such additional information affirms connection with homeland that immigrants expressed in their writing, as well as suspended uncertainty each must have felt about his particular case in new land. The poetry from Angel Island and Cantonese rhymes from Chinatown represent varying emotional states, given differences in authors' actual experiences. While writings express hopefulness at times and, in case of Cantonese rhymes a playful spirit, their descriptions of real living conditions in America more often revealed frustration and despair instead. There are other important distinctions--such as writing style and medium between two groups of writing--which reveal experiences faced by both Chinese who arrived and those who eventually remained in America. …

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

IntroductionTranslators' NoteThe VoyagePoems 1-11Oral HistoriesThe DetainmentPoems 12-33Oral HistoriesThe Weak Shall ConquerPoems 34-46Oral HistoriesDeportees, TransientsPoems 57-69Oral HistoriesImprisonment in the Wooden BuildingAppendix: Poems 1-66Sources of PoemsSources of PhotographsEnglish BibliographyChinese Bibliography