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An Interview With Judy Yung and Genny Lim On Their New Book Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island Interviewed by Leonard D. Chan First of all congratulations on your new edition of Island, it is quite a substantial work. Besides for the poems that were in the original edition, this latest edition feels and looks almost like a completely new book. When and why did you first start to consider doing this second edition and when did you get started in earnest? You added a lot to the oral history portion of the book - did you consider creating a separate new book with just oral histories pertaining to Angel Island? I would imagine you had a great deal of oral histories to choose from. How did you decide which ones would get in this book? I have not read them all yet, but I thought immigration inspector Emery Simms and interpreter Edwar Lee's oral histories were fascinating because they gave a perspective from the workers at Angel Island. A side note, Edwar Lee did an Angel Island interview with my grandmother when she was leaving on a visit to China. When I first read his name, during some personal family history research, I thought his name was misspelled. That's why I remembered his name. I was delighted to find this connection between your book and my past. Did the poems that Jann Mon Fong and Tet Yee transcribe from the walls when they were interned at Angel Island match any of the ones that still could be found on the walls? I would imagine it was hard to sort through all their notes along with the other sources and figure out the duplicates. Describe for us the process you went through - from the finding, choosing, and translating, to turning them into English poems. For the first edition, we chose to include all 135 complete poems that had been found in two sections of the book. The better poems were placed in the main section by their thematic contents: The Voyage, In Detention, The Weak Shall Conquer, About Westerners, and Deportees and Transients. The other poems were placed in the Appendix. Him Mark Lai did the lion's share of the work, translating each poem and writing footnotes, which were necessary for understanding the colloquial expressions and allusions to historical figures and events in the poems. Genny spent hours refining Him Mark's translations, adding feeling and depth to them. We felt it was important to lay out the Chinese poem and English translation on facing pages with the footnotes appearing on the same page as the poem. Were there some poems that were indecipherable or just incoherent graffiti that didn't make it in the book? Do you believe there are any more poems that can be found at Angel Island and the other immigration stations? I seem to recall that you mentioned there were non-Chinese writings on the walls too. Is there enough for another book? Genny: We didn't see the point of including every bit of writing and graffiti just for the sake of preserving everything. There was an esthetic and theme I was searching for. A thread that wove itself throughout the collection that revealed the real human feelings and emotions that festered and sought expression behind locked doors. Without these poems, we would not have an honest record of what transpired, nor the psychological impact of the Angel Island experience on the Chinese. Would you know about whether poem writing was a common form of expression in the places where these immigrants came from? I recently came across the practice of muyu folk music in the Toishan region of China. I believe author Ruthanne Lum McCunn writes about it in her book Wooden Fish Songs, but I have not had a chance to read it yet. Can you shed some light on whether there was a connection between the two? Genny: There is a very long tradition of oral singing or muk yi, wooden fish songs, in the old villages of Toisan, I grew up hearing my mother's singing. I suspect the form is connected with early indigenous shamanistic practices of Southern China, because the chant-songs my mother sang were mostly functional- word spells sung to exorcise spirit possession from nightmares or from entry into clothes through holes or tears in them. In the sewing factory, where I worked as an adolescent ironing blouses, a few of the women would also sing muk yi. There was one very fine wooden fish singer in New York City Chinatown by the name of Ng Sheung Chi, or Uncle Ng as everyone called him, who had his songs recorded before he passed on around the seventies. He once performed at the Chinese Culture Center in San Francisco at a very special Wooden Fish Song gathering that attracted many wonderful Toisan singers, who got up on stage and sang extemporaneously. The style is very akin to the Black southern rural blues as exemplified by early artists like Leadbelly, Son House or Howling Wolf. But instead of a guitar and harmonica, the muk yi singers use their wooden fish clappers to keep a steady beat. The verse form of the songs are very similar to some of the longer narrative poems that were basically laments. The poem, "My Wife's Admonishment," from Victoria, B.C., for example, could easily be a muk yi if it were to be sung. Growing up, the old timers sang all the time in Chinatown. This art has been lost. Judy, I read your answer to this similar question in the interview you did with the University of Washington Press's blog at http://bit.ly/1IAvuTx, so this next one goes to Genny. This question comes from Martin Jung - do you have a particular poem from this collection that stood out and left a lasting impression upon you? "From now on. I am departing far from this building. The metaphor of a jade cage is very powerful. It resonates with meaning even today with materialism being the trap of the American Dream that all immigrants aspire to. It's a very prophetic and profound poem. To think, it was probably written by a twenty-year old! About | Contact | New | Specials | Browsing | Ordering | Conference | Links | Help Copyright © 2015 by AACP, Inc. Most recent revision January 15, 2015 |