Bringing the Past to the Poetic Present
By JM Huck
Photo by JM Huck, Angel Island Immigration Station at the women’s barracks.
When a creative writing teacher told us about poetry by immigration detainees on Angel Island, I knew I had to go. I drove all the way to San Francisco, boarded a ferry at Embarcadero, and rode a shuttle to the museum at Angel Island Immigration Station in the San Francisco Bay. There are several books translating the poems carved onto the walls of the detention center for those interested. What surprised me most with my in-person visit was the smell. There was no air conditioner, and while windows were fully opened in the two-story structure, a stale, chemically-smell filled the air. My guess was that the smell was coming from the walls, like building materials, or maybe thick layers of paint accumulated throughout the years. I was also fortunate to meet a docent on my visit, whose mother and uncle were detained but refused to ever talk about their experience.
That visit and others are a part of my historic inquiry into Asian America, or what being Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) means. I’m not studying dates, key facts, and figures. I am traveling to places to wonder and imagine. Sometimes, I am meeting and chatting with people.
Recently, I revisited the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City’s Chinatown. One of the galleries vilifies photographer Arnold Genthe for manipulating shots taken of San Francisco Chinatown. Later when I read Julia Flynn Siler’s book on Chinese sex trafficking, The White Devil’s Daughter, I reformulated my impression of Genthe, who is portrayed as sympathetic to the Chinese and credited with donating art to the women’s shelter.
Photo by JM Huck, Angel Island Immigration Station at the women’s barracks.
While history would place Genthe, a photographer based in San Francisco as a chronicler and documentarian in support of the Chinese Exclusion Act, inquiry into his life reveals a more nuanced, complex relationship with early immigrants from China.
No matter how messy the past, it is a subject worth examining. A scholar I met at the Asian Pacific American Institute explained that history is a process of inquiry and interpretation. Multiple sources are necessary and multiple conclusions—inevitable.
A friend in higher education said, AAPI history is American history; that is why we must learn it.
Social studies or civics teachers may grumble and say they have no time to add one more thing, like Asian Studies, to the curriculum. Parents may join them, in fear that remembering difficult parts of our nation’s past can only further divide America.
I believe there is room. There is room in our textbooks, and room at our dinner tables. There is room, through ongoing inquiry, for both acknowledgement and healing.
JM Huck is participating in the docupoetics panel at the 2024 Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl. She is the co-founder of We Write Las Vegas and is a Creative Writing MFA candidate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Photo by Galo Delgado at the Guggenheim Museum.