Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofAsian American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
- 1 The Origins of Chinese American Autobiography
- 2 Stage Orientalism and Asian American Performance from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
- 3 “I Seek Out Poems Now Incomplete”: Writing from the Angel Island Immigration Station
- 4 The Eaton Sisters and the Figure of the Eurasian
- Part II The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
- Part III The Asian American Movement
- Part IV Canons
- Part V Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
- Part VI Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - “I Seek Out Poems Now Incomplete”: Writing from the Angel Island Immigration Station
from Part I - Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2015
Book contents
- The Cambridge History ofAsian American Literature
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Early Forms of Expression to the Start of the Twentieth Century
- 1 The Origins of Chinese American Autobiography
- 2 Stage Orientalism and Asian American Performance from the Nineteenth into the Twentieth Century
- 3 “I Seek Out Poems Now Incomplete”: Writing from the Angel Island Immigration Station
- 4 The Eaton Sisters and the Figure of the Eurasian
- Part II The Exclusion Era, World War II, and the Immediate Postwar Era
- Part III The Asian American Movement
- Part IV Canons
- Part V Post-1965 and the Twenty-First Century
- Part VI Twenty-First Century: 9/11, Empire, and Other Challenges to Literature
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The critical nexus of materiality and writing affords a standpoint from which to examine the Angel Island poems: that of language politics. The Chinese written language has long been a source of fascination for Europeans, with much of that fascination deriving from what was (mis)understood as the pictorial or graphic basis of the construction of the written character. Taking up the foreign language aspect of the Angel Island poems, entails grappling with not only the semantic content of the language of the poems but also a history of Western responses to both the Chinese language and Chineseness. The Angel Island poems are currently on display at a restored Angel Island Immigration Station now designated a National Historic Landmark. Revisiting the Angel Island poems occasions questions about what the poems mean or signify and what different constituencies of readers need them to mean and signify at different historical moments.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature , pp. 71 - 87Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015