Voices of Angel Island : inscriptions and immigrant poetry, 1910-1945 / Charles Egan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Egan, Charles, author.

Language:

English

Multiple languages

Subjects (All):

Angel Island Immigration Station (Calif.).

Poetry--Minority authors--Translations into English.

Poetry.

Emigration and immigration--Poetry.

Emigration and immigration.

Immigrants' writings.

Inscriptions.

African, Asian and Postcolonial Literatures.

Poetry (Lit).

Literary Studies.

Local Subjects:

African, Asian and Postcolonial Literatures.

Poetry (Lit).

Literary Studies.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (361 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

London : Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020.

Language Note:

This book includes the English translation of selected poems along with the text in its respective original language. While Chinese remains the dominant language on the source of the selection, Japanese is also strongly represented, and Russian, English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Punjabi (both Gurmukhi and Urdu scripts), Bengali, and Korean are also found.

System Details:

text file

HTML

Summary:

"Voices of Angel Island is a historical and literary anthology of the writings of immigrants detained at Angel Island, designed to provide a conduit for readers today to connect with early 20th-century perspectives on the process of "becoming American." The Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay has been called the "Ellis Island of the West," but its purpose was quite different. It was primarily a detention center, established in large part to discourage immigration by Asians. The station barracks contains an extraordinary archive: hundreds of poems and prose records in half a dozen languages are on the walls, inscribed by immigrant detainees between 1910 and 1940, and by P.O.W.s and "enemy aliens" during World War II. Charles Egan draws on over a decade's work deciphering the wall inscriptions by Japanese, Chinese, Korean, European, and other detainees to assemble a selection of their writings in this book, alongside literary materials from Bay Area ethnic newspapers. While each inscription tells the story of an individual, taken together they illuminate historical, economic and cultural forces that shaped the lives of ordinary people in the early 20th century"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Japanese inscriptions, 1910-1940. Wall inscriptions

Prose and poetry from Nichibei Shimbun

Korean inscriptions, 1910-1940. Wall inscriptions

Poetry from Sinhan Minbo

Chinese inscriptions, 1910-1940. Wall inscriptions

Other materials

Other inscriptions, 1910-1940. Russian wall inscriptions

Poems from Russkii Golos

South Asian wall inscriptions

Poems from Ghadar de Gunj

European languages

World War II wall inscriptions, 1942-1945. By Japanese Hawaiians

By prisoners-of-war

By post-war deportees

Endnotes (including locations of wall inscriptions)

Appendices. Poem numbers in Island, 1st and 2nd editions

Wall locations of Island poems (Island order)

Wall locations of Island poems (wall order)

Tet Yee manuscript poems and locations

Smiley Jann manuscript poems and locations

Wall locations of pictures.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 325-330) and index.

ISBN:

9781501360466

1501360469

9781501360473

1501360477

9781501360480

1501360485

OCLC:

1202464822