Book Recommendations

For Students

Currier, Katrina Saltonstall. Kai's Journey to Gold Mountain. Tiburon: Angel Island Association, 2004. The story is based on former detainee and San Francisco resident Albert Wong’s experience on Angel Island as a twelve-year old as he leaves China and journeys alone to “Gold Mountain” or America, to live with his father. Kai’s Journey can also be purchased at “Angel Island Association’s online gift shop” for $14.00 (soft cover) or $21.00 (hard cover) including tax and shipping.

Hoobler, Dorothy & Thomas. The Chinese American Family Album. London: Oxford University Press, 1994. This resource accessible for upper-elementary/middle school students traces the experience of Chinese Americans using historic photographs, diary selections, letters, oral histories, and newspaper articles combined with general background. The section on Angel Island includes a selection of poems and excerpts of oral histories from former detainees.

Hoobler, Dorothy, et al.  The Japanese American Family Album.

Lee, Milly. Landed. New York: Farrar, Stuas and Giroux, 2006. In this illustrated children’s book, Lee draws upon on her father-in-law’s experience to tell story of a Chinese immigrant boy coming to Angel Island trying to join his father in America.

Wong, Li Keng. Good Fortune: My Journey to Gold Mountain. Atlanta: Peachtree Publications, 2006. In her book, Wong, a former detainee and teacher, shares her account of her journey to the United States from China through Angel Island Immigration Station, and her settlement in Oakland Chinatown. The chapter book is written for elementary school children.

SPICE. Angel Island: The Chinese-American Experience, California: SPICE Publications, 2011. This is a graphic novel about Chinese immigrants being detained at Angel Island. The book compares the immigrants to European immigrants at Ellis Island.

For Adults

Chan, Sucheng. Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991. This book is a good general reference that provides an overview of Asian American history dating from the 1880s to 1990s.

Fanning, Bramwell and Wong, William. Images of America: Angel Island. Arcadia Publishers, 2007. This hoto history book has a extensive chapter on tgehistory of the immigration station and on AIISF efforst to preserve the site.

Lai, Him Mark, Genny Lim, Judy Yung. Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940. San Francisco: HOC DOI (History of Chinese Detained on Island), 1980. This book is an excellent source on information on the experience on Angel Island. It contains an overview of the history of the Immigration Station, provides oral histories excerpts from former detainees, and documents the poetry written on the walls in Chinese with English translations. This book can be ordered through AIISF.

Pegler-Gordon, Anna. In Sight of America - Photography and the Development of U.S. Immigration Policy, published by the University of California Press.  Pegler-Gordon, an Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at Michigan State University, examines the impact photography had in implementing immigration policy at Angel Island, Ellis Island, and on the U.S.-Mexico border.  Using rare photographs and documents culled from the National Archives and Immigration Service files, Pegler-Gordon provides a multi-faceted look at how photography was used by immigrants to verify and in some cases create their identities.  The chapters devoted to the Angel Island experience reveal the creativity used by Chinese immigrants to set their image in the proper context to garner more favorable treatment. Equally fascinating are the chapters devoted to Ellis Island as the locus of ethnographic excursions by art photographers.

Rouse Jorae, Wendy. The Children of Chinatown - Growing Up Chinese American in San Francisco 1850-1920.  This book takes you on a remarkable journey that charts the evolving nature of Chinese American identity that is catalyzed by the youth of the Chinese community. Rouse Jorae provides captivating portrayals of young people stranded at the Angel Island Immigration Station, rescued from sexual and domestic abuse in Chinatown, and as marginalized Americans in a racist society.  Highly readable, i.e. absent the convoluted, arcane language of academia, Rouse Jorae engages the reader with lively accounts of how Chinese people actively sought to shape their destinies in the face of discrimination, contesting authorities for educational rights and economic equality.  Using the treatment of children as its lens, the author provides insights on the development of the Chinese community.

Stavans, Ilan. Becoming Americans - Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing.  Published by the Library of Americac.  Edited by Stavans, a professor of Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College, this book is a collection of essays, poems, and stories that present diverse immigrant voices.  Stavans, who is a Polish-Ukrainian Jew born in Mexico City, collected 85 pieces written by immigrants from 45 countries.  Some of the writers are major authors such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Vladimir Nabokov, Jamaica Kincaid, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Junot Diaz.  Others are lesser-known but equally eloquent:  Carlos Bulosan, Bernardo Vega, and the Angel Island Immigration Station poets. Organized chronologically, the stories take you on a journey through American history through the eyes of immigrants.  Through their voices we relive the fears, hopes and bewilderment of people yearning to be full partners in a nation that alternately welcomes and rejects their presence.

Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore. Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1989. Using narrative history, personal recollection, oral testimony, this book presents the history of Asian immigration and settlement in the U.S.

Yung, Judy. Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. This book documents Chinese American women’s voices through letters, essays, poems, autobiographies, and oral histories.

For Additional Research

Barde, Robert Eric. Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island.  Greenwood Publishing Group, 2008.

Chen, Shehong. Becoming Chinese, Becoming Chinese American. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001.

Chin, Tung Pok & Chin, Winifred C. Paper Son: One Man’s Story. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000.

Chinese Historical Society of Southern California & the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. Origins & Destinations: 41 Essays on Chinese America. Los Angeles: Chinese Historical Society of Southern California & UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

Interfaith Coalition for Immigrant Rights and Grace Urban Ministries. Congregational Ministry & Advocacy at the Angel Island Immigration Station, 1910-1940.

Gyory, Andrew. Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Hing, Bill Ong. Making and Remaking Asian America Through Immigration Policy, 1850-1990. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Hsu, Madeline Y. Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and South China, 1882 - 1943. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Lee, Erika. At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration During the Exclusion era, 1882-1943. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.

Lee, Erika and Judy Yung. Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. Oxford University Press, 2010. 

Ma, L. Eve Armentrout. Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns: Chinese Politics in the Americas and the 1911 Revolution. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990.

McClain, Charles J. In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle Against Discrimination in 19th Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Salyer, Lucy. Laws as Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Wong, K. Scott and Chan, Sucheng. Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities During the Exclusion Era. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.

Yung, Judy. Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.