Ellis Island: A People's History

by Malgorzata Szejnert, Sean Gasper Bye (Translator)

Overview

A dramatic, multi-vocal account of the personal agonies and ecstasies that played out within the walls of Ellis Island, as told by Poland’s greatest living journalist

This is the people’s history of Ellis Island—the people who passed through it, and the people who were turned away from it.

From Annie Moore, the Irishwoman who was the first to be processed there, to Arne Peterssen, the Norwegian who was the last to be taken away from the island via the official ferry boat in 1954, Ellis Island weaves together the personal experiences of forgotten individuals with those who live on in history: Fiorello La Guardia, Lee Iacocca, and other American leaders whose paths led them to the Island for various reasons through the years.

Award-winning journalist Małgorzata Szejnert draws on unpublished testimonies, memoirs, archival photographs, and correspondence from many internees and immigrants, including Russians, Italians, Jews, Japanese, Germans, and Poles. At the book’s core is a trove of personal letters from immigrants to their loved ones back home—letters which were confiscated and never delivered, finally discovered in a basement in Warsaw.

But also brought to life are the Ellis Island employees: the doctors, nurses, commissioners, interpreters, social care workers, and even chaperones, who controlled the fates of these émigrés—often basing their decisions on pseudo-scientific ideas about race, gender, and disability. Sometimes families were broken up, and new arrivals were detained and quarantined for days, weeks, or even months.

All told, the island compound spent longer as an internment camp than as a migration way-point—in addition to filling other roles through the years, including that of rescue station in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Now brought back to life by a master storyteller, this is a story of a place and its people, steeped in politics and history, that reshaped the United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781950354054
Publisher:	Scribe Publications Pty Ltd
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	391,960
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

For forty years, Małgorzata Szejnert (b. 1936) has been one of Poland’s most important nonfiction writers and editors, shaping a generation of Polish literary reportage. She began writing about challenging social issues in the 1970s, and was an active member of the opposition during the Solidarity period. After the fall of Communism, she co-founded Poland’s leading daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and led its reportage division for 15 years. Since retiring, she has devoted herself entirely to book writing. Her topics range from Poland to America to Zanzibar, always with a warm, personal focus, allowing marginalised people to speak for themselves through her work.

Sean Gasper Bye is a translator of Polish, French, and Russian literature. His translations of fiction, reportage, and drama have appeared in Words Without Borders, Catapult, and Continents, and he is a winner of the 2016 Asymptote Close Approximations Prize. He was awarded an NEA Translation Fellowship to work on this book.

Table of Contents

Part I Rising Tide 1

Part II Flood 89

Part III Becalmed 145

Part IV Pitch and Toss 179

Part V Ebb Tide 225

Part VI Still Waters 273

Part VII Pearl Divers 303

From the Author 343

List of Illustrations 345

End Notes 351

Index 379

Editorial Reviews

06/15/2020

Polish journalist Szejnert delivers a kaleidoscopic history of Ellis Island told primarily through the accounts of immigrants who arrived there seeking entry into the U.S. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources including letters, memoirs, and official government records, Szejnert personalizes the era’s immigration statistics by foregrounding the experiences of people such as Ludmila Foxlee, a Czech immigrant who passed through Ellis Island with her family as a nine-year-old in 1894 and then became a social worker and patron of immigrant families; Paula Pitum, a disabled Russian Jewish girl whose family fought her deportation with the support of neighbors in Olean, N.Y.; and Ellis Island physician Victor Safford, whose personal reflections on immigrant racial types serve as an entry point into Szenjert’s discussion of the impact of racial classification on U.S. immigration policy. With fine-grained details and fluid writing, Szejnert humanizes the immigrant experience in late 19th- and early 20th-century America. Genealogy buffs and history fans will celebrate this engrossing portrait. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

To me Małgorzata Szejnert embodies the image of Poland…She has grace, a gentle tone, and a serene gaze.”
—Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of Secondhand Time

“This “people’s history” comprises intimate views of Ellis Island both from immigrants and from staff, including doctors, social workers, commissioners, and interpreters (among them the future mayor Fiorello LaGuardia). Policies were shaped by anti-Semitism, fear of Communism, and xenophobia, and monthly immigration quotas in the twenties led to “a peculiar type of boat race” in New York Harbor, as ships rushed to deliver their passengers. Szejnert also records the idealism and the compassion of those employed there—such as the social worker who gave new arrivals stylish American clothing—many of whom were immigrants themselves.”
—New Yorker

“As Szejnert shows, it would be difficult to find a scrap of land that better revealed the moral state of the Northern hemisphere during the first half of the 20th century than Ellis Island…a pleasurable read for anyone wanting to know more about those who immigrated to the United States and those who, because of prejudice or sheer bad luck, never made it.”
—LA Review of Books

“Making extensive use of primary documents, including letters written by immigrants to family in the old country, the author captures the mingled hope and fear experienced as people entered the massive main building…Szejnert does not scant the fear of ‘degraded, backward’ people ‘unfit to join into American life’ that culminated in the 1924 law that basically slammed the door on Italian and Jewish immigration. But her emphasis is on the immigrants’ fortitude and resilience and the empathetic assistance of Ellis Island personnel—many themselves immigrants…Warmly human and extremely moving—a welcome addition to the Ellis Island literature.” STARRED REVIEW
—Kirkus Reviews

“With fine-grained details and fluid writing, Szejnert humanizes the immigrant experience in late 19th- and early 20th-century America.”
—Publishers Weekly

“In addition to filling a gap in American history, [Ellis Island] gives attention to a female journalist in the male-dominated genre of Polish reportage. Anyone looking to learn more about the history of immigration in the United States will enjoy this intimate portrayal of American history.”
—Asymptote Journal

“Drawing on a huge archive of previously unpublished correspondence and recordings, a Polish journalist and outstanding storyteller brings alive the experiences of immigrants who ended up at Ellis Island as well as the wide range of employees who dealt with them. It’s a story that is still relevant today.”
—Matt Witt, World Wide Work

From the Publisher

★ 2020-04-28
A Polish journalist chronicles the history of America’s famed immigration station through the stories of individuals who worked there or passed through on their way to a new life.

In an afterword, Szejnert notes that she wrote this account after discovering that there were no books about Ellis Island available in Polish, but her people-centered narrative fills an English-language gap as well. Making extensive use of primary documents, including letters written by immigrants to family in the old country, the author captures the mingled hope and fear experienced as people entered the massive main building, equipped with modern accoutrements few had seen in their ancestral villages, and faced numerous bureaucratic barriers. Quotes from John Weber, the first Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York, and his successors make palpable the massive logistical effort required to process all these people—more than 1 million in the peak year 1907—and the officials’ commendable determination to do it fairly, efficiently, and humanely. Szejnert does not scant the fear of “degraded, backward” people “unfit to join into American life” that culminated in the 1924 law that basically slammed the door on Italian and Jewish immigration. But her emphasis is on the immigrants’ fortitude and resilience and the empathetic assistance of Ellis Island personnel—many themselves immigrants, such as interpreter Francesco Martoccia and social worker Cecilia Greenstone, one of several redoubtable matrons charged with protecting female immigrants from human trafficking. Szejnert reveals countless intriguing historical tidbits: the luggage room with space for 12,000 passengers’ bags, sick immigrants required to wash who “had never seen a bathtub and…were afraid to get in the water.” The author also evokes the island’s ghostly atmosphere after it was abandoned in 1954 and the determined efforts that led to its triumphant 1990 reopening as a museum, visited by 2 million people each year.

Warmly human and extremely moving—a welcome addition to the Ellis Island literature.

Kirkus Reviews