Synopses & Reviews
From 1910 to 1940, the Angel Island immigration station in San Francisco served as the processing and detention center for over one million people from around the world. The majority of newcomers came from China and Japan, but there were also immigrants from India, the Philippines, Korea, Russia, Mexico, and over seventy other countries. The full history of these immigrants and their experiences on Angel Island is told for the first time in this landmark book, published to commemorate the immigration station's 100th anniversary.
Based on extensive new research and oral histories, Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America examines the great diversity of immigration through Angel Island: Chinese "paper sons," Japanese picture brides, Korean refugee students, South Asian political activists, Russian and Jewish refugees, Mexican families, Filipino workers, and many others. Together, their stories offer a more complete and complicated history of immigration to America than we have ever known.
Like its counterpart on Ellis Island, the immigration station on Angel Island was one of the country's main ports of entry for immigrants in the early twentieth century. But while Ellis Island was mainly a processing center for European immigrants, Angel Island was designed to detain and exclude immigrants from Asia. The immigrant experience on Angel Island — more than any other site — reveals how U.S. immigration policies and their hierarchical treatment of immigrants according to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, and gender played out in daily practices and decisions at the nation's borders with real consequences on immigrant lives and on the country itself.
Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America is officially sponsored by the Angel Island Immigration Station.
Review
"Erika Lee and Judy Yung have written the definitive book on Angel Island. The book is meticulously researched and covers not just the Chinese experience but the experiences of all the people who passed through the immigration station. Lee and Yung have used the personal stories of immigrants to make time and place come alive, reminding us that history is something that happens to real people and their families." Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of a Chinese-American Family
Review
"With this comprehensive history, Angel Island may now stand alongside Ellis Island as the other iconic gateway to America. Lee and Yung give a thorough and humane look at the immigrants from surprisingly diverse origins who encountered an America both welcoming and unwelcoming on the Pacific coast." Mae M. Ngai, author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America
Review
"In this meticulously researched and richly detailed book, Lee and Yung have unlocked Angel Island's deepest secrets and the link between U.S. immigration policy and restrictive codas of race, gender, class. Their spell-binding narrative lets us journey with Anglos and Latinos as well as Asians and myriad others as they attempt to pass through the eye of the Immigration Station needle — with often vastly different results. Deeply relevant to present-day immigration debates, this book is people's history at its best." Helen Zia, author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People
Synopsis
From 1910 to 1940, over half a million people sailed through the Golden Gate, hoping to start a new life in America. But they did not all disembark in San Francisco; instead, most were ferried across the bay to the Angel Island Immigration Station. For many, this was the real gateway to the United States. For others, it was a prison and their final destination, before being sent home.
In this landmark book, historians Erika Lee and Judy Yung (both descendants of immigrants detained on the island) provide the first comprehensive history of the Angel Island Immigration Station. Drawing on extensive new research, including immigration records, oral histories, and inscriptions on the barrack walls, the authors produce a sweeping yet intensely personal history of Chinese "paper sons," Japanese picture brides, Korean students, South Asian political activists, Russian and Jewish refugees, Mexican families, Filipino repatriates, and many others from around the world. Their experiences on Angel Island reveal how America's discriminatory immigration policies changed the lives of immigrants and transformed the nation.
A place of heartrending history and breathtaking beauty, the Angel Island Immigration Station is a National Historic Landmark, and like Ellis Island, it is recognized as one of the most important sites where America's immigration history was made. This fascinating history is ultimately about America itself and its complicated relationship to immigration, a story that continues today.
Angel Island is the official publication commemorating the immigration station's 100th anniversary.
About the Author
Erika Lee is Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of
At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943.Judy Yung is Professor Emerita of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her books include Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island and Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Chapter One: Guarding the Golden Gate: The Life and Business of the Immigration Station
Chapter Two: "One Hundred Kinds of Oppressive Laws": Chinese Immigrants in the Shadow of Exclusion
Chapter Four: "Obstacles This Way, Blockades That Way": South Asian Immigrants, U.S. Exclusion, and the Gadar Movement
Chapter Five: "A People without a Country": Korean Refugee Students and Picture Brides
Chapter Six: In Search of Refuge, Freedom, and Opportunity: Russians, Jews, and Mennonites in the Promised Land
Chapter Seven: El Norte: Mexican Immigrants on Angel Island
Chapter Eight: From "U.S. Nationals" to "Aliens": Filipino Migration and Repatriation through Angel Island
Chapter 9: Saving Angel Island
Epilogue: The Legacy of Angel Island
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Notes/ Bibliography
Notes/ Bibliography