Shining Star: The Anna May Wong Story

Winner of the Carter G. Woodson Book Award presented to exemplary books written for children each year, Shining Star: The Anna May Wong Story is another top-notch biography by Paula Yoo, who also wrote the popular Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds. Shining Star tells the little-known story of Anna May Wong, a Chinese-American born at the turn of the century. Since her childhood Anna was dedicated to becoming a movie star against everybody’s wishes and expectations. Her parents forbade her from becoming an actress and Hollywood was not receptive to Chinese actors. These barriers did not hold Wong back; she persevered and after many years of practice she was “discovered” by a director. After she begins earning money, her family has a change of heart and begins supporting her dream of becoming a movie star. Defined and limited by her ethnicity, Wong takes on some small roles and is frustrated by the discriminatory practices and negative portrayals of Chinese people in film. During her career, minority actors were not allowed to kiss Caucasian actors on screen and most films created roles that represented docile and obedient or sinister and conniving Chinese characters. 

 

Yoo’s book portrays a strong female role model and shows an era that not only limited the success of females (women couldn’t vote, own property, or attend many universities), but also limited the freedoms of many minority groups. The book has many valuable lessons for students as young as seven who can understand the concepts of following one’s dream, perseverance, and standing up for what you believe in—all principles Wong demonstrates. Other themes represented in the book are forgiveness, the ability to change your mind and providing support to somebody who is following their dreams, as demonstrated by Wong’s parents.

The book importantly lends itself to starting a conversation about racism, discrimination, and stereotyping with young learners. Some questions to ask might include: How is the current reality for Asian-American actors similar and different from that experienced by Anna May Wong at the turn of the century? Why do you think Wong was turned down for the roles she sought? What assumptions were people making about her appearance and ability?

Shining Star is a valuable addition to any diverse classroom library not only for its concise, powerful and ultimately inspirational story told with captivating illustrations, but for its ability to portray the damaging nature of stereotypes and harsh effects of discrimination.

Additional Resources

•  About Ana May Wong: Watch and hear more about Anna May Wong in this short six minute film “In Her Own Words” which would make a great companion piece to a classroom read. Listen to author Paula Yoo discuss the importance of Anna May Wong’s story in this brief video clip.  

•  About Historical Context and Connections: Read a previous blog post contributed by the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation on What We Can Learn and Teach about the Chinese Exclusion Act today. 

• About Asian American Stereotyping: Read about critical and acclaimed successes, as well as persistent stereotypes of Asian-American writers, artists, and actors from Asian-Nation, a website by Professor C.N. Lee. Also, visit Teaching Tolerance’s “I Am Asian American” Toolkit for helpful resources and reflective questions on building an inclusive classroom for Asian-American ethnicities.

• About Building a Diverse Library: Visit book publisher Lee & Low’s website for more books like Shining Star included in their Asian Pacific American Heritage Collection.

What We Can Teach and Learn From the Chinese Exclusion Act

-- Contributed by the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF)

Faith, Fear, Hope, Dreams. These are some of the words etched into the memorial walls at the Angel Island Immigration Station, a point of entry on the west coast which served to both include and exclude immigrants. Individuals that passed through or were detained here included Australians and New Zealanders, Canadians, Mexicans, Central and South Americans, Russians, and in particular, Asians.

The month of May is Asian American Pacific Heritage month and it provides an opportunity to take a closer look into the bleak history of the remote, fog-shrouded Immigration Station to see what conditions allowed it to exist and to explore our current societal and individual thoughts on race and immigration. As we study its history, connections can be made in the classroom illustrating how personal beliefs lead to civic engagement and legislation that can affect us all for many generations.

The Immigration Station, set on a small island in the San Francisco Bay, was built in 1910 to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first major piece of legislation targeting a nationality. Unlike Ellis Island where immigrants were processed within hours or days, on Angel Island, many were detained for weeks, months, and even years.

The Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers. Only diplomats, teachers, students, merchants, and travelers were allowed to enter. This law was not repealed until 1943 when China was a U.S. ally in World War II.

How did this law come about? In the 1870s, an economic depression created serious unemployment problems. Racist labor union leaders directed their actions and the anger of unemployed workers at the Chinese, blaming them for depressed wages and lack of jobs, and accusing them of being morally corrupt. Because of these opinions, local and statewide restrictions continued to be enforced against the Chinese until the U.S. government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act.

In the classroom, we can use this history to ask the students what it means and feels like to be excluded. Were they ever left out of a group or activity? What did that feel like? And why do people sometimes exclude others? 

The Exclusion Act was a result of attitudes driven by fear and racism to exclude Chinese from mainstream American life. Some of the underlying ideas and sentiments of the Exclusion Act are similarly and reprehensibly expressed for the discrimination experienced by other groups. Lesson two from the Angel Island Immigration Journeys created by the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation has a complete plan for this as well as a detailed U.S. Immigration History timeline.

America is a nation of immigrants and continues to be an immigration destination for people from all over the world seeking opportunities. Yet, immigration still captures our news headlines and is cause for much heated debate. Using the history of the Angel Island Immigration Station, we can help our students develop the critical thinking and emotional intelligence to shape how Americans think and act towards immigration now and in the future.


Additional Resources
•    HSTRY Immigration Timeline: To broaden the study of immigration history, check out HSTRY’s interactive immigration timeline for high school students which includes several primary source texts and images, quiz questions, and discussion forums for students.

•    Connect your historical study of immigration to the present moment by asking students to take an Immigration Status Privilege Walk, our newest lesson plan, where students learn the meanings of various U.S. immigration statuses in order to understand their ‘benefits’ and ‘limitations.’

•    For more lessons and resources to teach about the Chinese Exclusion Act, visit the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation website and The UC Berkeley Bancroft Library’s Chinese in California, 1850-1925 Digital Archive.

What Poetry Means on Angel Island

  --  Contributed by the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF)

The insects chirp outside the four walls.

The inmates often sigh.

Thinking of affairs back home,

Unconscious tears wet my lapel.

—a poem carved into the barracks walls at the U.S. Immigration Station at Angel Island

For centuries, poetry has played a powerful role in our lives. Poetry is a way of remembering history, of bearing witness. It can also be an essential avenue leading to the self-empowerment of an individual. For immigrants detained at the U.S. Immigration Station at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, poetry was a critical outlet.  It became the vehicle of expression detainees used to combat isolation, alienation and silence.

The Immigration Station was built to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first major piece of legislation targeting a nationality. Forced to spend weeks, sometimes years at the processing station, the imprisoned men carved hundreds of poems into the barracks walls contemplating their fate:

Four days before the Qiqiao Festival

I boarded the steamship for America.

Time flew like a shooting arrow.

Already, a cool autumn has passed.

Counting on my fingers, several months have elapsed.

Still I am at the beginning of the road.

I have yet to be interrogated.

My heart is nervous with anticipation. 

It was poetry that saved the Immigration Station from destruction.  In 1970, plans were in place to demolish the abandoned detention barracks when park ranger Alexander Weiss slipped into the building to explore.  Weiss, too, was an immigrant brought to America as a four-year-old Jewish refugee from Austria escaping the Holocaust. He was astonished to find entire walls covered in calligraphy. Defying orders from his supervisor to ignore the “graffiti,” Weiss told his professor at San Francisco State College about his findings and soon the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF) was launched to save the Immigration Station from ruin.

Working with our California State Park partners, AIISF launched an online educational immigration module targeted at 11^th graders.  In the module, students study the major turning points in American history through the lens of immigration with an emphasis on the people who came through the United States Immigration Station on Angel Island.

Lesson three of this module focuses on the poetry. Available for free online, it includes selected poems from the incredible book, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island 1910-1940, by Him Mark Lai, Genny Lim and Judy Yung.  In the lesson, students learn to think rhetorically in order to analyze the primary text of a poem. They compare the perspective shared in the poems and engage in a "Text Talk," by coming to a discussion prepared with annotations.

We’ve found that these poems resonate with students of every ethnic background and family immigration story. These are poems of anger and frustration, hope and despair — feelings any 11^th grader may have experienced.  Many adolescents may feel a similar sense of entrapment as the poetry on the barracks walls convey:

                              I, a seven foot man, am ashamed I cannot extend myself.

                              Curled up in an enclosure, my movements are dictated by others.

                              Enduring a hundred humiliations, I can only cry in vain.

                              This person’s tears fall, but what can the blue heavens do?

Importantly, these poems document a grave moment in U.S. history, detailing with excruciating clarity in a way that textbooks cannot, of how we barred access to certain immigrant groups based on fears and prejudice.

Teaching about the U.S. Immigration Station at Angel Island through the poetry carved into the station walls is a bold reminder of America’s history of racial exclusion. And it is a lesson to be invoked as we grapple with current immigration policies and work toward a more inclusive society.

How Angel Island, 105 Years Later, is an Opportunity for Educators

The Jon B. Lovelace Collection of California Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

This week marks the 105^th anniversary of the opening of Angel Island which is often referred to as the “Ellis Island of the West.”  Most textbooks don’t explore Angel Island, the Chinese Exclusion Act, or detention.  Those units or chapters that do exist often don’t look at immigration from a point of view other than the slice of history which brought millions of Europeans through Ellis Island.  The reality is that there were processing stations all over the United States and for over thirty years the Angel Island Immigration Station processed approximately 1 million Asian immigrants entering into the US.  Unlike many of the other processing stations, Angel Island also served as a detention center.  Due to the restrictions of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, many Chinese immigrants spent years on the island, waiting for entry. When Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, it froze the size of the Chinese immigrant population in the country.  No new Chinese, except for a select few, including scholars and diplomats, were allowed into the country. Those already here were largely barred from citizenship. The act effectively blocked Chinese men who had immigrated during the Gold Rush and the railroad boom of the late 19th century from reuniting with their families.  

According to KQED, the exact number of immigrants who passed through Angel Island is unknown. In addition to being a detention site, the station was also an administrative site. As such, it processed the paperwork for all people coming into and leaving the United States, and not just for those who spent time at the site. Current estimates put the figure of actual immigrants who passed through the Station at about 300,000. Comparatively, Ellis Island received about 12 million throughout the time of its operation. Of those who arrived at Angel Island, it is estimated that anywhere from 11 percent to 30 percent were ultimately deported, whereas the deportation rate for the East Coast was only 1 percent to 2 percent.

The American Immigration Council’s Special Report discusses the parallels of the Chinese Exclusion Act and current immigration issues:

The United States, a country that prides itself on being a land of immigrants, historically has a mixed record towards immigrants of color, particularly Asian immigrants. In the decades before the Civil War, the nation was expanding westward and needed laborers for railroad building, mining, construction, logging, and fishing. These laborers were often Chinese (who comprised 20 percent of California’s labor force by 1870 even though they constituted only .002 percent of the entire U.S. population) or Asian Indians, followed by waves of Japanese, Koreans, and Filipinos. These migrations were propelled by the California Gold Rush of 1848, as well as U.S. expansion into the Hawaiian Islands. Speaking languages other than those of Europe, with very different cultures and traditions, Asians a century ago confronted the same fear and anger that Mexican immigrants often face today.

Educators who want to discuss Angel Island and detention often find that starting the discussion with poetry that was left by detainees is an amazing conversation starter.  While waiting for entry into the United States, many of those at Angel Island began carving poetry into the walls of their barracks. Officers of the station puttied over the walls as many as seven times between 1910 and 1940 to cover over the poetry. The Angel Island: Poetic Waves site is interactive and includes a sampling of these poems as well as a timeline, personal immigration stories, and a virtual tour of the facility with complete audio in both English and Chinese.  

Primary sources are a great way to tell the story of Angel Island and achieve Common Core alignment. Actor and comedian Byron Yee has put together a fascinating collection that tells the story of his family and their navigation around America’s discrimination of the Chinese.  The bypass many Chinese took to immigrate to the United States during the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act was known as “Paper Sons.”  A “Paper Son” was the term coined for young Chinese males coming into the United States stewarded by an American citizen of Chinese descent who traveled back to China, and upon return, claimed to have had a wife and sons.   These “sons” were really only sons in paper only, and so known as “Paper Sons”.  Yee also highlights another strategy many Chinese took after immigration and birth records were destroyed in municipal buildings during the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, which was to claim natural born US citizenship.  

The Council’s 2011 Celebrate America Creative Writing Contest Winner wrote a poem about her great-grandfather, a Chinese immigrant who was able to avoid detention and cross the country looking for acceptance and opportunity.  Additionally, elementary school students will enjoy reading Paper Son: Lee's Journey to America, an Amazon Best Children's Books of 2014, which chronicles the story of twelve-year old Lee’s immigration from China to the US as a “paper son” with beautiful illustrations.

The anniversary of Angel Island Immigration Station is an opportunity for educators to teach about the fears, uncertainties, and dreams accompanying not only immigrants, but the US, who receives them.

Correction:

In our original post above, we stated that “current estimates put the figure of actual immigrants who passed through the Station at about 300,000. Comparatively, Ellis Island received about 12 million throughout the time of its operation. Of those who arrived at Angel Island, it is estimated that anywhere from 11% to 30% were ultimately deported." 

We meant to refer to the percentage of people denied entry at Angel Island, not deported and will point out this distinction to our source.  According to Dr. Erika Lee, Professor and Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota, who kindly noted this error to us, the number of those persons denied entry is 5% with varying rates according to nationality (a low of 1 percent for Japanese immigrants and a high of 25% for South Asians).  For comparison purposes, Ellis Island processed 12 million people, 10% were detained (usually for a few days for legal or medical reasons), and 2% were deported in the end.

In 2012, Dr. Lee and her co-author, Dr. Judy Yung, published a paperback edition of Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America, another comprehensive resource for educators and lay readers which includes updated research, immigration records, and oral histories, among other essential components to tell the stories of those who lived through it.  In their book, they clarify the term deportation and its varying usage: “Deportation refers to the removal of aliens already in the United States.  Immigration officials referred to deporting both foreigners residing in the United States and applicants for admission who had been denied entry.  We use deportation to describe both the official action of barring applicants for admission and returning them to their port of embarkation and the removal or expulsion of immigrants residing in this country.” (xxii)