The Far Country

I’m grateful to honor an extraordinary book that served as a critical and primary source for my research process on this play: Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940, Lai, Him Mark, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung, eds. © 2014, Reg. No. TX 8-066-082 (University of Washington Press listing).

The book is not just a wide-ranging account of the Exclusion Era and the history of Angel Island Immigration Station, it is also a compilation of the extraordinary poetry found on the walls in the detention center, and an important, remarkable document of a pivotal and under-examined period in Asian American history.

I’m deeply grateful to Genny Lim, not only for her generous permission to include excerpts from her translations of the poems in the text of the play, but even more for the extraordinary and comprehensive work she has done over many years to unearth, illuminate, and share the history it contains. I’m also deeply sorry for not including this acknowledgement during the first two productions of the play — because without Genny’s work, along with her colleagues Him Mark Lai and Judy Yung, this history would still be completely hidden from the world. Their passion and commitment to sharing the voices and experiences of the poets of Angel Island were not only of critical importance to the play, they are of critical importance to the history of Asian America. I hope you will take a deeper dive into this history through this groundbreaking book, and I can’t thank Genny and her colleagues enough for all they’ve done to give voice to the poets of Angel Island.

Lloyd Suh