Historical Events

1882 an act was passed called the Chinese Exclusion act was passed banning immigration of laborers from China to the United States. Students and businessmen were allowed to immigrate to the U.S. This act was to keep Chinese laborers out because many Americans thought they were taking the better jobs and did not want the competition in the job market. 

March 28, 1898: US vs. Wong Kim Ark – U.S. Supreme Court ruled that to deny citizenship to any person born in the U.S. would be a violation of the 14^th Amendment. All US-born Asians were granted free citizenship as a result of this Supreme Court ruling. 

December 7, 1941 is a day "that will live in infamy" because of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese attacked the naval base in Hawaii and it resulted in the United States entering World War II. 

During WWII President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942 uprooting 100,000 people of Japanese descent on the west coast to be sent to internment camps. This came as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. American were afraid the Japanese Americans would ally with the Japanese to help fight the war. 

The first Asian American to become a member of Congress was Dalip Singh Saund in 1956. He was a South Asian farmer with a Ph.D. degree from central California. This step led to more Asian Americans being involved in politics.

1965 Immigration Act – equalized immigration, resulting in a wave of new immigrants from non-European nations such as Asia and others. This act transformed the demographic and cultural characteristics of the United States. The act also led immigration numbers to double over the next five years and then again in the five years following.

Poem #1

Here is a poem The River Merchant's Wife: A Letter by Li Po and translated by Ezra Pound.

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead

I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.

You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,

You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.

And we went on living in the village of Chokan:

Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.

 

At fourteen I married My Lord you.

I never laughed, being bashful.

Lowering my head, I looked at the wall.

Called to, a thousend times, I never looked back.

 

At fifteen I stopped scowling,

I desired my dust to be mingled with yours

Forever and forever and forever.

Why should I climb the look out?

 

At sixteen you departed,

You went into far Ku-to-en, by the river of swirling eddies,

And you have been gone five months.

The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.

 

You dragged your feet when you went out.

By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,

Too deep to clear them away!

The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.

The paired butterflies are already yellow with August

Over the grass in the West garden;

They hurt me.  I grow older.

If you are coming down through the narrows of the river Kiang,

Please let me know beforehand,

And I will come out to meet you

                      As far as Cho-fu-Sa.

This poem tells the story of a Chinese girl who is in an arranged marriage. The relationship is at first forced and she wishes she could go back to her old life before she was married. As the years go by, she grows to love her husband and when he dies on one of his journeys she mourns his passing and longs to be with him again. The poem demonstrates different aspects of Chinese culture with arranged marriages and the vocation of river merchant. The poem also expresses how people who have grown up in the Chinese culture respond to the custom. The girl is at first against her arranged marriage but soon loves her husband and is glad for the marriage.