THIS CHAPTER COMBINES medieval literary analysis and ecocriticism to consider the poetic corpus (hundreds of lyrics) that Chinese detainees carved into the wooden walls of detention barracks of the Angel Island Immigration Station, a site in San Francisco Bay currently registered by the United States as a National Historic Landmark due to its cultural significance. Located in waters a boat ride away from the city of San Francisco, CA, this so-called “Ellis Island of the West” was where many newcomers from Asia were processed as they sought entry into the US and it also operated as an immigration detention center from 1910–1940. The majority of the detainees were Chinese with some staying as long as months or years before being deported or “landed” (granted entry into the US). Thick with literary allusions and references to imprisonment and injustice in Chinese myths and literary classics, the mostly anonymous and untitled poems that the detainees composed while on Angel Island adapted medieval lyric forms (conventionalized in the Tang Dynasty) for a new geopolitical environment.

Crafting new poetic terms not used in medieval lyrics themselves, the detainee-poets repeatedly invoked the modern “wooden house” (木屋) or “wooden building” (木樓) as a prison and an uncanny home. The barracks of Angel Island, situated within a garden landscape inaccessible to the detainees themselves, were a site of frustration, humiliation, longing, and anger. In this chapter, I explore how detainees drew upon a rich tradition of medieval Chinese lyrics to testify to their own lived experiences of incarceration, and I conclude by reflecting on the importance of this “wooden building” as a site of cultural memory and activism today.

Previous chapters in this book have examined how elite Chinese Americans (or Chinese immigrants seeking US citizenship) used medieval imagery or genres to address urgent issues of racism, discrimination, and cultural belonging. During the earlier part of the twentieth century, Chinese immigrants who were scholars or merchants were not subjected to restrictions as harsh as those for incoming laborers, and my discussion of Angel Island poetry focuses on experiences of incarcerated migrants who were often less privileged and hailed from humble village origins.

This chapter has three main strands. First, I provide historical context and socio-political background for the composition of Angel Island poetry itself.