Summary
Angel Island, off the coast of California, was the port of entry for Asian immigrants to the United States between 1892 and 1940. Following the passage of legislation requiring the screening of immigrants, "the other Ellis Island" processed around one million people from Japan, China, and Korea. Drawing from memoirs, diaries, letters, and the "wall poems" discovered at the facility long after it closed, the nonfiction master Russell Freedman describes the people who came, and why; the screening process; detention and deportation; changes in immigration policy; and the eventual renaissance of Angel Island as a historic site open to visitors. Includes archival photos, source notes, bibliography, and index.
Author Notes
Russell Freedman was born in San Francisco, California on October 11, 1929. He received a bachelor's degree in English from the University of California, Berkeley in 1951. After college, he served in the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps during the Korean War. After his military service, he became a reporter and editor with the Associated Press. In 1956, he took a position at the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson in New York, where he did publicity writing for television. In 1965, he became a full-time writer.
His first book, Teenagers Who Made History, was published in 1961. He went on to publish more than 60 nonfiction titles for young readers including Immigrant Kids, Cowboys of the Old West, Indian Chiefs, Martha Graham: A Dancer's Life, Confucius: The Golden Rule, Because They Marched: The People's Campaign for Voting Rights That Changed America, Vietnam: A History of the War, and The Sinking of the Vasa. He received the Newbery Medal for Lincoln: A Photobiography and three Newbery Honors for Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery, The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane, and The Voice That Challenged a Nation: Marian Anderson and the Struggle for Equal Rights. He also received the Regina Medal, the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture Award, the Orbis Pictus Award, the Sibert Medal, a Sibert Honor, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, and the National Humanities Medal. He died on March 16, 2018 at the age of 88.
(Bowker Author Biography)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-For the 30 years it was in operation, from 1910-1940, Angel Island Immigration Station served as the first step for hundreds of thousands of people seeking a new home and a new life in the United States. It was a bleak, unwelcoming introduction to the new land, and for many immigrants, primarily those from China, it was also a detention center. Many Chinese were held there for weeks or months at a time while they endured lengthy interviews and invasive medical exams in order to prove that they could enter the U.S. Freedman's inimitable style and approach to nonfiction writing shines in this accessible, thoughtful history of Angel Island and its legacy in the American immigration narrative. Detailed descriptions of the island, the actual building, the events that took place there, and the people who passed through its doors are sprinkled with the emotional poems, quotes, and other writings that were discovered covering the walls of the areas where the detainees were housed. These words provide not only a unique perspective of the immigrants, but also a context for what was happening in the broader world, specifically the racist, xenophobic attitudes encountered by many new arrivals. Complemented by photographs, artwork, and primary sources, Freedman's writing offers up a strong, engaging introduction to the subject of a more diverse immigrant population and the obstacles that were put in its way. Equally evocative and informative, this is an excellent choice for middle school libraries.-Jody Kopple, Shady Hill School, Cambridge, MA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Freedman (Becoming Ben Franklin) details the fascinating and sometimes upsetting history of the "Ellis Island of the West" as he examines Asian immigration to the U.S. at the start of the 20th century. The many Chinese immigrants who disembarked at Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay between 1910 and 1940 usually found it more detention than welcoming center. A thorough narrative, with personal vignettes and b&w archival photos, describes the taxing sea voyage from Asia, long detentions at the island, and intolerant attitudes endemic in America. Owing to strict exclusion laws for the Chinese (and later other Asian groups), thousands waited in cramped barracks for medical tests and stringent interviews. (Freedman also includes resistance stories of immigrants already settled in the country to these prejudicial laws, e.g., returning laundry to customers folded but still dirty.) Making this poignant account even more so are translated poems interspersed throughout, written by despairing detainees on barrack walls: "Nights are long, the pillow cold; who can comfort my solitude?.... Shouldn't I just return home and learn to plow the fields?" A selected bibliography and index are included. Ages 9-12. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
This is our Plymouth Rockour Valley Forge, our Alamo, our Statue of Liberty, our Lincoln Memorial, all rolled into one. In 1970, California park ranger Alexander Weiss happened upon unusual markings on the walls of an abandoned and decaying building on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. The writing turned out to be inscriptions and wall poems left by Chinese immigrants passing through the Angel Island Immigration Station, and Weisss findings sparked a campaign to rescue and restore the site. (It was eventually declared a National Historic Landmark in 1997 and opened to the public in 2009.) Freedmans slender volume covers a lot of ground, his exploration of immigration from Asia through Angel Island serving as a contrast to the waves of European immigration through Ellis Island he described in Immigrant Kids (1980). Chinese immigrants on the West Coast faced great discrimination, and Angel Island became a detention center and barrier for many. Freedman weaves a clear and straightforward narrative history with abundant quotations, excerpts from diaries and wall poems, and archival photographs. This is a clearly written account of a lesser-known side of American immigration history that may add to readers understanding of current political debate. Thorough source notes and a selected bibliography round out the engaging volume. dean schneider (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Writing with clarity, Newbery Medal winner Freedman (Becoming Ben Franklin, 2013, etc.) explores a lesser-known period in U.S. immigration history, when the San Francisco Golden Gate was anything but welcoming. Opened to enforce exclusion laws, the Angel Island Immigration Station, often called the Ellis Island of the West, served as the primary gateway to the Pacific Coast between 1910 and 1940. Over half a million people from more than 80 different countries were processed there, the majority of them from China. In telling the history of Chinese people in the U.S., the author doesn't hold back on the racial discrimination these immigrants faced, including the passing of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act. Despite that, immigrants came, but they faced interrogations and long periods of detention on Angel Island. Here, the experience is made most vivid and poignant when Freedman weaves in the recollections of detainees, including "picture brides" and refugees, taken from books and videos. The historical photos of Angel Island life, notably the poems expressing frustration carved in Chinese calligraphy into the barracks walls (gracefully reproduced as design accents on front- and backmatter), bring depth and perspective to a dark period in American history. In this case, the walls do talk. As immigration continues to be a major issue in America, this introduction to the Angel Island experience is overdue and, most of all, welcome. (source notes, selected bibliography, acknowledgments, picture credits) (Nonfiction. 9-14)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Called the Ellis Island of the West, Angel Island, located in San Francisco Bay, was once the busiest immigration station on the West Coast. For generations of Asian immigrants, it was the first stop upon landing in America. As Freedman points out in this history of the island and Asian immigration up to 1940, it was the last stop as well for those who were denied entry, and many were forced to live in detention barracks for days or weeks, awaiting entrance interviews that would decide their fate. The detainees' feelings of hope, frustration, anger, and, in some cases, despair are preserved in the carved or painted rows of poems they left on the walls of their barracks. While many nationalities Japanese, Korean, Russian, and others passed through Angel Island, the Chinese were subjected to special scrutiny, and for some, there was no hope of immigration, thanks to the harshly discriminatory Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Freedman chronicles all of this in his carefully researched and clearly written history, which is lavishly illustrated with black-and-white photographs and drawings. Appended are a selected bibliography and notes identifying the sources of all quoted material. Now a National Historic Landmark, Angel Island is a place where we can learn from the past, as is Freedman's important book.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist
