Bridge Across the Sky
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected 27 Aug 2024
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- 12,99 €
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- Pre-Order
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- 12,99 €
Publisher Description
A raw and honest historical novel in verse about a Chinese teen who immigrates to the United States with his family and endures mistreatment at the Angel Island Immigration Station while trying to navigate his own course in a new world.
Tai Go and his family have crossed an ocean wider than a thousand rivers, joining countless other Chinese immigrants in search of a better life in the United States. Instead, they’re met with hostility and racism. Empowered by the Chinese Exclusion Act, the government detains the immigrants on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay while evaluating their claims.
Held there indefinitely, Tai Go experiences the prison-like conditions, humiliating medical exams, and interrogations designed to trick detainees into failure. Yet amid the anger and sorrow, Tai Go also finds hope—in the poems carved into the walls of the barracks by others who have been detained there, in the actions of a group of fellow detainees who are ready to fight for their rights, in the friends he makes, and in a perceived enemy whose otherness he must come to terms with.
Unhappy at first with his father’s decision to come to the United States, Tai Go must overcome the racism he discovers in both others and himself and forge his own version of the American Dream.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A teenage immigrant faces the ramifications of the Chinese Exclusion Act in this vivid verse novel inspired by the anonymous poems of Chinese detainees found at Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco. Upon arrival in March 1924, a teen, along with his father and grandfather, is detained on Angel Island. The youth is armed only with personal details: "I am Lee Yip Jing,/ nephew of Thomas Lee,/ a San Francisco merchant/ with whom my father, his brother,/ is a partner." His story, however, is a lie meant to fool American authorities while they investigate his account. His real name is Tai Go, and for months he endures poor living conditions. Still, he is strengthened by writings from previous immigrant detainees etched into the walls of his barracks. He also joins a resistance group led by charismatic Yen Yi, witnesses how elders wield the most power within the station, and spies on Boocher, a teenage Black kitchen worker suspected of being an American informant. Ng (Basho's Haiku Journeys) examines the history of white imperialism and racism through lyrical and introspective verse, while conversational dialogue fosters intimacy and immediacy with contemporary readers. Ages 14–up.
