Angel Island Part 1: A Haunting History
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Welcome to Angel Island. With stunning views of San Francisco Bay and lush hiking trails, it’s nestled between the promise of the Golden Gate Bridge and California’s sun-soaked mainland coast.Colloquially known as the “Ellis Island of the West,” this tiny island processed hundreds of thousands of new immigrants between 1910 and1940. But those who landed in the San Francisco Bay received a decidedly less hospitable welcome than the European masses who disembarked in New York. Asians arriving at the Angel Island Immigration Station faced separation, interrogation, and often deportation under the longstanding Chinese Exclusion Act.
The ghosts of Angel Island, however, endure. Poems carved into the soft wooden walls of the detention barracks give voice to long-remembered frustration, humiliation, and loneliness of the immigrants detained there. Though plastered and painted over throughout the years, these inscriptions in Chinese calligraphy link that shameful past to our present immigration debate, bringing history into the reality of our current lives.
How do you tell a story as vast, challenging, and immediate as Angel Island? You begin in the detainees' own words, of course.
In Part One of this series, violist and founding member of the Del Sol Quartet, Charlton Lee, introduces both Angel Island's history and the creatives behind The Angel Island Project. A collaboration between Del Sol and composer Huang Ruo, this haunting and beautiful oratorio for string quartet and chamber choir weaves together poetry and music in a poignant, powerful expression of history, hope, and humanity, and has rippled into collaborations around the world.
“The purpose of Angel Island,” says Huang Ruo, “is to create dialogues and to bring people together in hope that we treat people different from us in a better way than what happened, in hope that history will not repeat itself.”
Listen for insights and stories from collaborators, like the poet who helped translate the Angel Island poems for English-speaking audiences, the arts educator who’s preserving Asian American history for future generations, and the executive director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, whose work shines a light on a dark period in US history.
PART 1 FEATURES
Charlton Lee, Del Sol Quartet violist
Huang Ruo, Composer and conductor
Kathryn Bates, Del Sol Quartet cellist
Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Del Sol Quartet violinist
Ben Kreith, Del Sol Quartet violinist
Ed Tepporn, Executive Director, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation
Andi Wong, Teaching Artist and Arts Advocate
Genny Lim, Poet, Playwright, Performer, Pioneer
RESOURCES
Angel Island Immigration Station
Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation
Immigrant Voices Oral History Project
Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island
The Chinese Historical Society Of America
William & Flora Hewlett Foundation
UC Berkeley Global Urban Humanities Initiative
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Everything Everywhere All At Once
University Of California - Berkeley
QUOTES
“It’s able to tell a story that's really hard and something that we don't always want to hear, but it's so critical to actually making us whole, even if we don't even think that story is ours.” - Emiko Ono
“One of the surprises we discovered is that the controversy over the southern border of the U.S was not originally about keeping Mexicans out, but rather, the Chinese.” - Charlton Lee
“What's also important to recognize is that the experience for immigrants was different if you were Asian versus if you were European.” - Edward Tepporn
“Immigration to this country on the West Coast for Asian Americans or Chinese Americans was a very different experience than you often read in the history books, of everybody coming to America, and you are greeted by the Statue of Liberty.” - Andi Wong
“That chapter on Angel Island is so graphic. I mean, you can walk in there and just feel that history. You could feel the ghosts, you could smell the wood, you could see the calligraphy.” - Genny Lim
LEARN MORE
https://www.delsolquartet.com/podcast
CREDITS
Hosted by Charlton Lee
Produced by Andrea Klunder, The Creative Impostor Studios, Charlton Lee, Kathryn Bates, Hyeyung Sol Yoon, Ben Kreith
Story Editor: Andrea Klunder
Sound Design: Andrea Klunder
Technical Director & Post Production Audio: Edwin R. Ruiz
Field Producer & Recording Engineer: Kathryn Bates
Field Producer: Verena Lee
Podcast Manager: Alex Riegler
Show Notes: Lisa Widder
Cover Art: Felicia Lee
Theme Music: composed by Charlton Lee, performed by Del Sol Quartet
Executive Producers: Andrea Fellows Fineberg, Don Fineberg
Featured music from The Angel Island Oratorio composed by Huang Ruo. Performed by Del Sol Quartet & United States Air Force Band's Singing Sergeants / National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution, recording and edited by Suraya Mohamed.