01 Mar / Paper Angels and Bitter Cane by Genny Lim [in What Do I Read Next? Multicultural Literature]
Two important plays on the Asian American experience: Paper Angels, a groundbreaking one-act play about Chinese immigrants detained on the West Coast immigration center, Angel Island, debuted in 1980 and was produced by American Playhouse for PBS in 1985; and Bitter Cane focuses on the virtual imprisonment of Asian immigrant laborers by Hawaiian sugar cane plantations, told through the story of a young Chinese son who follows in the laboring footsteps of his missing father.
Lim’s diverse detainees in Paper Angels are a cross-representation of the approximately 175,000 Chinese immigrants who entered the U.S. between 1910 and 1940 through Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. The unjust Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 drastically limited Chinese immigration, granting entry only to merchants, students, and tourists. Would-be immigrants who did not fit into the designated categories attempted to enter with falsified papers (therefore referred to as “paper sons”), linking them to Chinese American “relatives.” Lim herself is a descendant of an Angel Island detainee.
Review: “Asian American Titles,” What Do I Read Next? Multicultural Literature, Gale Research, 1997
Readers: Young Adult, Adult
Published: 1990