Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America

by Erika Lee, Judy Yung

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199896158
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/01/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	1,124,656
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d)

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
1. Guarding the Golden Gate: The Life and Business of the Immigration Station
2. "One Hundred Kinds of Oppressive Laws": Chinese Immigrants in the Shadow of Exclusion
3. "Agony, Anguish, and Anxiety": Japanese Immigrants on Angel Island
4. "Obstacles This Way, Blockades That Way": South Asian Immigrants, U.S. Exclusion, and the Gadar Movement
5. "A People without a Country": Korean Refugee Students and Picture Brides
6. In Search of Refuge, Freedom, and Opportunity: Russians, Jews, and Mennonites in the Promised Land
7. El Norte: Mexican Immigrants on Angel Island
8. From "U.S. Nationals" to "Aliens": Filipino Migration and Repatriation through Angel Island
9. Saving Angel Island
Epilogue: The Legacy of Angel Island
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Notes/ Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

"The book is...an important work that effectively synthesizes multiple group histories and integrates institutional and social history. Its detailed storytelling, elegant writing, beautiful illustrations, and focus on an underappreciated yet iconic place on the West Coast make it a pleasurable read and a welcome addition to the literature on U.S. migration."—The Western Historical Quarterly

"Lee and Young offer a meticulously researched and sweeping view of immigration in America, one that is shaped by global economic and social conditions as well as racial, religious, class, and gendered views of those migrants coming to America."—The Public Historian

"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

"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

"In this meticulously researched and richly detailed book, Lee and Yung have unlocked Angel Island's deepest secrets and the link between US 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

"With scholarly care and a great feel for the stories of those who passed through Angel Island, Erika Lee and Judy Yung have finally given this important historic site its due. This book teases out the complexities of America''s immigration laws and their enforcement and in doing so greatly adds to our understanding of the immigrant experience."—Vincent J. Cannato, author of American Passage: The History of Ellis Island

"Reading Angel Island, a gripping new book on America's immigrant history, feels like traveling over familiar territory, except that someone turned the road signs in the opposite direction....More than a superb historical text...[A]n essential document in the on-going debate over American freedom."—California Literary Review

"Lee and Yung offer a kaleidoscope of immigrant portraits that bring history alive, and, in the process, demolish many myths and stereotypes about Angel Island and American immigration in general."—San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher