Verified Document

Carved In Silence Term Paper

¶ … Carved in Silence directed by Felicia Lowe [...] its particular value in sociological perspectives. This is a moving and emotional documentary regarding the Chinese Exclusion Act, and their subsequent incarceration on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. It indicates how poorly America treated Chinese immigrants, and how desperately these people wanted to live and work in America. This documentary film uses interviews of survivors of Angel Island, workers on the island, and modern day reenactments to depict the plight of the Chinese immigrants who were forced to stay on Angel Island until their immigration papers were either approved or disapproved. This practice took place from 1882 to 1943, as a result of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which limited the number of Chinese immigrants that could legally come to the United States. Immigrants who thought they were traveling to a new life in "Gold Mountain," were actually forced to stay on Angel Island and wait to be interrogated about their lives, their relatives, and even their homes and living conditions to establish they were indeed who they said they were.

The documentary is short, only 45 minutes or so, but it presents a vast amount of information in that short time. The interviews of people who stayed on Angel Island are quite compelling, but the documentary also uses modern day footage as historic recreations of what life was like on the island, from what the detainees ate, to how they wiled away the long, isolated hours. Some played games, some read, and...

Many of these poems, "carved in silence," remain in the barracks today, and there is a concerted effort to save them for posterity and for Angel Island visitors to understand and view. The documentary ends with a review of what happened to immigrants after the Exclusion Act was lifted by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942, and how Chinese still distrust Americans because of these early practices. It also indicates how the Chinese, excluded by white society, founded their own areas to live and work, and how these Chinatowns in cities across the United States helped keep the Chinese separate and apart from a vast segment of society. The documentary ends with two moving portraits of people who survived Angel Island, or were deported, making it quite clear how these people suffered enormously, and yet still wanted to remain in America for a better life.
This was a moving film that created a sense of anger and disbelief in the viewer. It is difficult to believe that these practices went on in America, and that they were only applied to the Chinese immigrants. Early in the documentary, the narrator notes that on the East Coast, immigrants viewed the Statue of Liberty on their arrival in the country, while on the West Coast, Chinese immigrants viewed no statue, they viewed a makeshift prison instead. It seems so unfair to keep the Chinese out of the country, especially when they were so instrumental in building and business in the country in the 1860s…

Sources used in this document:
References

Carved in Silence. Dir. Felicia Lowe.
Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf Found in the Seagull Reader
Words: 989 Length: 3 Document Type: Essay

Virginia Woolf In "A Room of One's Own," Virginia Woolf argues that writing is a means by which women can empower themselves, and in so doing, subvert patriarchy. Woolf uses symbolism throughout the essay, namely in the central concept of a room. A room, or a physical space, provides the power of place from which to launch probing inquiry and social commentary. Rather than dwell inside the confines of a patriarchal,

American Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham
Words: 871 Length: 3 Document Type: Essay

American Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt sculpted Mount Rushmore. Being an American President is surely one of the most honorable duties that one can take on, considering the country's role in international affairs and the fact that people in this position have a great influence over all Americans. Even with this, the Mount Rushmore National Memorial is not only meant to celebrate the fact that George

The Social Problem Film Genre
Words: 2725 Length: 9 Document Type: Term Paper

Promising Young Woman (2020): A Social Problem Film First DraftIntroductionFrom the onset, it would be prudent to note that as Doles (2023) points out, �social problem films (sometimes called social-consciousness films, message movies, or other similar phrases) are films that dramatize some set of concerns, which they depict as broadly representative of the conditions of their historical moment� (n.p.). Thus, in essence, a social problem film could be conceptualized as

Virginia Woolf's View of Women
Words: 6146 Length: 19 Document Type: Research Paper

It would take an entire paper just to explicate all of the roles that women play today and how society has changed as a result. The point is that it has changed and that women play a much different role in literature today than they did even just a century ago during Woolf's time. Woolf saw just a glimpse into the social turn that has led to the present

Gender in the Mediterranean
Words: 967 Length: 3 Document Type: Essay

Gender Leila Ahmed's 1992 book Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate is divided into three parts. One is devoted to the pre-Islamic Middle East including Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. This background section provides an historical and cultural context that is often omitted from discourse on gender and Islam. The second section of Women and Gender in Islam is on the founding discourses, and encompasses the period

Timberlake Feminist Drama: Two Plays
Words: 3990 Length: 12 Document Type: Research Proposal

As Beauvoir said, these plays tend to deal with restoring a sense of value and choice to a world that has been largely stripped of these features by modern critical, literary, and dramatic trends. Character is created with a greater sense of agency in these plays, and identity -- especially feminine identity -- ironically emerges as more of an actively created and self-determined construct through its interactions within and

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now