We have been looking at Chinese immigration to this country. First we viewed a video about Angel Island, then listened to a reading of Landed (about one boy’s experience getting through the interrogation at Angel Island), looked at photographs of the times, created a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting the differences between Angel and Ellis Island, and visited the Museum of Chinese in America.
Here are some observations you made after studying the photographs of Angel Island:
- All Chinese
- They look down/worried/tight
- A lot of different buildings
- More people working (inspectors/guards)
- All men
- Squished on the boat/faces looked tense
- Lots of hats (related to time period, perhaps?)
- Same medical tests as at Ellis Island
- Officers were on the ships
- Angel Island looks nicer (perhaps because it seemed larger and there were more trees)
- They thought they saw passengers praying
- Lots of Chinese seemed to be wearing slippers while officers were wearing boots. Also, the officers looked as if they were put off by the immigrants.
Today we are going to look more closely at the poetry of Angel Island. First of all, let’s look at a video and some of the poems at this website.
Here’s our annotations for poem #8:
Now that you have finished looking closely at the second poem (which we will add in her later) and have learned so much about Chinese writing and poetry from Ms. Feldman it is time for you to bring this all together.
And so now we would like you to a comment to this blog pos tconsidering what you have learned about this group’s experiences and how it connects to the experiences of those you learned about in the fall. For example, how does it compare to the Ellis Simulation or your Oral History subject’s story? Keep in mind that anyone coming to this blog can read your comments (unlike your blogs which are currently private). So make these comments substantive, worth reading, and don’t forget to proofread them!