The Harp Primer

Egan, Charles

History

Nabu Press

Voices of Angel Island is a historical and literary anthology of the writings of immigrants detained at Angel Island, designed to provide a conduit for readers today to connect with early-20th-century perspectives on the process of "becoming American." The Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay has been called the "Ellis Island of the West," but its purpose was quite different. It was primarily a detention center, established in large part to discourage immigration by Asians. The station barracks contain an extraordinary archive: hundreds of poems and prose records in half a dozen languages are on the walls, inscribed by immigrant detainees between 1910 and 1940, and by POWs and "enemy aliens" during World War II. Charles Egan draws on over a decade's work deciphering the wall inscriptions by Japanese, Chinese, Korean, European, and other detainees to assemble a selection of their writings in this book, alongside literary materials from Bay Area ethnic newspapers. While each inscription tells the story of an individual, taken together they illuminate the historical, economic, and cultural forces that shaped the lives of ordinary people in the early 20th century.

Voices of Angel Island: Inscriptions and Immigrant Poetry, 1910-1945

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Bloomsbury Academic

About the Author\nCharles Egan is Professor of Chinese at San Francisco State University, USA. He is the author of Clouds Thick, Whereabouts Unknown: Poems by Zen Monks of China, which was awarded the 2011 Lucien Stryk Prize in Asian Translation by the American Literary Translators Association. He has published extensively on the evolution of Chinese classical poetic genres, and is a frequent translator.\nVoices of Angel Island is a historical and literary anthology of the writings of immigrants detained at Angel Island, designed to provide a conduit for readers today to connect with early-20th-century perspectives on the process of "becoming American."\nThe Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay has been called the "Ellis Island of the West," but its purpose was quite different. It was primarily a detention center, established in large part to discourage immigration by Asians. The station barracks contain an extraordinary archive: hundreds of poems and prose records in half a dozen languages are on the walls, inscribed by immigrant detainees between 1910 and 1940, and by POWs and "enemy aliens" during World War II. Charles Egan draws on over a decade's work deciphering the wall inscriptions by Japanese, Chinese, Korean, European, and other detainees to assemble a selection of their writings in this book, alongside literary materials from Bay Area ethnic newspapers. While each inscription tells the story of an individual, taken together they illuminate the historical, economic, and cultural forces that shaped the lives of ordinary people in the early 20th century.

The Killing Snows: The Defining Novel of The Great Irish Famine

This book is fiction. The story that inspired it was not. In 1990, a box of very old documents was found on a small farm in the west of Ireland. They had been stored for well over a hundred years and told an incredible story of suffering, of love and of courage. In 1846, a young couple met during the worst days of the Great Irish Famine. The Killing Snows is a way to imagine what led to their meeting and what followed from it.

The Killing Snows: The Defining Novel of the Great Irish Famine

Genre Fiction

Silverwood Books

Cold is the Dawn: A Novel of Irish Exile and the Great Irish Famine

Hunger deepened in Ireland in 1848 as the potato crop failed again.
In London, the government, alarmed by austerity in England and revolution in Europe, refused to re-open the soup kitchens in Ireland. But, worse still, they refused to halt food exports from the starving country.
Emigration quickened as many were evicted, and many more fled from a wasted land. They worked the waterfronts and coal mine of America and the railways and building sites of England. But hunger still stalked them.
Cold is the Dawn follows these men and women and their bitter fight for survival in Ireland, England and America.

The Exile Breed: The Pitiless Epic of the Irish Famine Diaspora

The Exile Breed is a story of the Irish Famine in Ireland, Canada, England and the USA. The Famine intensified in 1847. Many left, but hunger and fever followed them. Thousands died in the Irish ghettoes of Liverpool, Manchester and London. Many more died in the ships on the Atlantic, in the emigrant hospitals of Quebec and Montreal, in the forests and along the back-roads of Canada, and in the slums of New York and other American cities. Those who survived went on to build new lives in the lands of the Irish Diaspora.

Hunger deepened in Ireland in 1848 as the potato crop failed again. 
In London, the government, alarmed by austerity in England and revolution in Europe, refused to re-open the soup kitchens in Ireland. But, worse still, they refused to halt food exports from the starving country. 
Emigration quickened as many were evicted, and many more fled from a wasted land. They worked the waterfronts and coal mine of America and the railways and building sites of England. But hunger still stalked them. 
Cold is the Dawn follows these men and women and their bitter fight for survival in Ireland, England and America.

December 12th, 1846. At the height of the Great Hunger - the Killing Snows. As the Irish Famine came towards its climax of starvation and disease, Ireland was hit by the worst snow storm in recent history. Nothing like it had been seen in living memory, nor has it in all the years since. In 1846, the potato crop had failed for the second time, and this time the failure was total. In a panic, the Government instituted road building works as a means of paying people to buy corn. By November half a million people were working at 7 and 8 pennies a day, dropping to 2 and 3 pennies as piecework was introduced. But the weather worsened and it began to snow. In 1990, a Famine Relief payroll was discovered in a farm building in County Mayo. It covered 4 weeks in November and December 1846 in the Ox Mountains in East Mayo. It clearly showed the evidence of the reduction in wages week after week. Most horrific of all, the payroll ends abruptly in the final week as the heaviest snowstorm hit Ireland on December 12th, and the people in the mountains were cut off to starve or freeze to death. 'The Killing Snows' was inspired by this document. It is also based on the true story of the man who wrote it, of the woman who loved him and of an impossible love story played out against a setting of famine, fever and death.

The Killing Snows: A Story of the Irish Famine

Discovered Authors

The Exile Breed: The Pitiless Epic of the Irish Famine Diaspora (The Irish Famine Series, Book 2 of 3)

Independently published

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Egan, Charles. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Egan, Charles

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Egan, Charles. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Harp Primer

Voices of Angel Island: Inscriptions and Immigrant Poetry, 1910-1945

Voices of Angel Island: Inscriptions and Immigrant Poetry, 1910-1945

The Killing Snows: The Defining Novel of the Great Irish Famine

Cold is the Dawn: A Novel of Irish Exile and the Great Irish Famine

The Exile Breed: The Pitiless Epic of the Irish Famine Diaspora

Cold is the Dawn: A Novel of Irish Exile and the Great Irish Famine

The Killing Snows: A Story of the Irish Famine

The Exile Breed: The Pitiless Epic of the Irish Famine Diaspora (The Irish Famine Series, Book 2 of 3)