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Register 51 Seats Remaining
Join Jeffrey Thomas Leong for a powerful reading from "Wild Geese Sorrow," his translations of poems carved into the walls of Angel Island by Chinese immigrants detained there between 1910-1940.
Refreshments and meet the author at 5:30pm. Copies of Jeffrey Thomas Leong’s books will be available for sale.
Against the legacy of the Chinese Exclusion Act which has many similarities to current national policies, Chinese detainees at the Angel Island Immigration Station chose to write and carve Tang poems of witness and protest into the barracks walls.
Jeffrey will share his translations of these poignant works, shedding light on their artistic beauty and historical importance. As some of the earliest examples of Asian American writing, these poems subvert racial tropes and use lyrical language to convey the anger, sorrow, and isolation felt by the detainees. Their words are a powerful testament to human resilience and perseverance
Jeffrey Thomas Leong is a poet and the author of the award-winning Wild Geese Sorrow: The Chinese Wall Inscriptions at Angel Island. His poetry chapbook Writ further explores the legacy of immigrant detention at Angel Island. He is currently at work on a memoir of the 1960s including the TWLF Strike and founding of Asian American Studies at UC Berkeley.
He received his MFA in Poetry from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and lives with his wife and daughter in the East Bay.
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