Voices of Angel Island: Inscriptions and Immigrant Poetry, 1910-1945
Join us for a public lecture from Dr. Charles Egan, Professor of Chinese at San Francisco State University.
Speaker: Dr. Charles Egan
Date: Monday April 29, 2024
Time: 12:30-2:00 PM
Location
DRBU Southwing Upstairs Lounge
1991 Virtue Way, Ukiah CA
Open to the Public
For inquiries, email: symposium@drbu.edu
Abstract
The Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay has been called the “Ellis Island of the West,” but its purpose was quite different. Angel Island was a detention center, established in large part to discourage immigration by Asians. The old station barracks contain an extraordinary archive: hundreds of poems and prose records in half a dozen languages are on the walls. They are inscribed by immigrant detainees between 1910 and 1940, and by P.O.W.s and “enemy aliens” during World War II. In 2021 Charles Egan published a book of these inscriptions, augmented by literary materials from Bay Area ethnic newspapers. In this lecture, Dr. Egan will present selections, and delve into broader questions of the American immigration story. Each text tells the story of an individual, but taken together they illuminate historical, economic and cultural forces that shaped the lives of ordinary people in the early 20th century.
Bio
Charles Egan is Professor of Chinese at San Francisco State University. He has published extensively on the evolution of Chinese classical poetic genres and is a frequent translator. His book, Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown: Poems by Zen Monks of China (Columbia University Press), was awarded the 2011 Lucien Stryk Prize in Asian Translation by the American Literary Translators Association. His new book, Voices of Angel Island: Inscriptions and Immigrant Poetry, 1910-1945 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2021), is the culmination of over a decade’s work researching wall inscriptions at the old Immigration Station on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.
