Ellis Island
Scribe Publications (Verlag)
978-1-911617-97-6 (ISBN)
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Whilst living in New York, journalist Małgorzata Szejnert would often gaze out from lower Manhattan at Ellis Island, a dark outline on the horizon. How many stories did this tiny patch of land hold? How many people had joyfully embarked on a new life there — or known the despair of being turned away? How many were held there against their will? In this landmark work of history, she brings the voices of the past vividly to life, transforming our understanding of the immigrant experience.
Ellis Island draws on unpublished testimonies, memoirs, and correspondence from internees and immigrants, including Russians, Italians, Jews, Japanese, Germans, and Poles, along with commissioners, interpreters, doctors, and nurses — all of whom knew they were taking part in a tremendous historical phenomenon.
It tells the many stories of the island, from Annie Moore, the Irishwoman who was the first to be processed there, to the diaries of Fiorello La Guardia, who worked at the station before going on to become one of New York City’s greatest mayors, to the ordeal the island went through during the 9/11 attacks.
Far from the open-door policy of myth, we see that deportations from Ellis Island were often based on pseudo-scientific ideas about race, gender, and disability. Sometimes, families were broken up, and new arrivals were held in detention at the Island for days, weeks, or months under quarantine. Indeed, the island compound has spent longer as an internment camp than as a migration station.
Today, the island is no less political. In popular culture, it is a romantic symbol of the generations of immigrants that reshaped the United States. But its true history reveals that today’s immigration debate has deep roots. Now a master storyteller brings its past to life, illustrated with unique archival photographs.
For forty years, Małgorzata Szejnert (b. 1936) has been one of Poland’s most important nonfiction writers and editors, shaping a generation of Polish literary reportage. She began writing about challenging social issues in the 1970s, and was an active member of the opposition during the Solidarity period. After the fall of Communism, she co-founded Poland’s leading daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza and led its reportage division for 15 years. Since retiring, she has devoted herself entirely to book writing. Her topics range from Poland to America to Zanzibar, always with a warm, personal focus, allowing marginalised people to speak for themselves through her work. Sean Gasper Bye is a translator of Polish, French, and Russian literature. His translations of fiction, reportage, and drama have appeared in Words Without Borders, Catapult, and Continents, and he is a winner of the 2016 Asymptote Close Approximations Prize. He was awarded an NEA Translation Fellowship to work on this book.
| Erscheinungsdatum | 25.09.2020 |
|---|---|
| Übersetzer | Sean Gasper Bye |
| Zusatzinfo | Illustrations, black and white |
| Verlagsort | London |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 153 x 234 mm |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte |
| Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte | |
| Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie | |
| ISBN-10 | 1-911617-97-4 / 1911617974 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-1-911617-97-6 / 9781911617976 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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