Man, and I thought Tuesday's readings were the most depressing thing I'd read.
Seriously, I can't believe how these Chinese immigrants got treated. Like, this is almost too extreme to believe actually happened. People getting locked up on an island for months on end just because of where they were from? I mean, literally being imprisoned after making an intense boat ride, being stopped short of the life they're trying to lead by some guys who say "I'm sorry, we don't want your kind here"? That sounds like some kind of bad story.
What strikes me as really odd about all this, however, is that none of this is taught in school here. Or at least, not where I'm from, which is right here in Virginia. We get told that the US passed an anti-Chinese immigration act, but we aren't taught any of these poems, or really, any of the horrible stuff that happened to Chinese would-be immigrants. I'd never even heard of Angel Island prior to this class. Why do you think that is? Why is it that people are so determined to hide the past?
I also went to school in Virginia and this was completely removed emotion-wise from what I was taught. There was a brief, "They had to go throw Angel Island and faced discrimination," but never a real explanation of what was happening at Angle Island. And when it comes to excluding the poetry, it seems unreasonable to me. In one of my English classes we spent a whole nine weeks just talking about poetry from the Holocaust, which is important to also pay attention to, but I also feel like it's hiding our own county's flaws behind another's.
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