Anytime I hear the word archives, I think of prehistoric objects that have great historic value and is hence stored or kept safe in the museum for public viewing. However, I have come to realize that archives have more to it than just the writing pen Einstein used to draft his general theory of relativity.
The relevance of Archives does not end at documenting the experiences of people but also provides voices for the marginalized by recording their struggles and at the same time their achievements. Archives also raise awareness by educating the public on the issues that have been kept underground for years and years.
One can take a look at social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and even Tumblr. These sites document the daily activities and thoughts of people and this information are being kept for future references if needed. However, one site that records the stories of people and helps them share their respective from numerous events through poems is the Angel Island Immigration Station Poetry.
This site has a documentation of poems written by overseas Chinese men on the walls of the Angel Island Immigration station, located in the San Francisco bay. The Angel Island center served as a detention and deportation center where thousands of Chinese men were detained and interrogated. Life for these Chinese men was stressful and unbearable due to the poor standard of living such as their sleeping conditions.
The poems were written by these men simply retells their experiences and what they went through at he Angel Island. This does not only serve a purpose for public reading but also give these men closure because they are able to tell their stories and, however, recover from their lost times. Some of the poems describe the feeling they had on their way to the Island and further continue to describe what they went through at the Island.
One of the poems written by one of the detainees from Heungshan begins by saying; there are tens of thousands of poems on these walls. They are all cries of suffering and sadness”. When one reads further, it seems as if the writing was their ‘safe haven’ in the sense that that seemed like the best way to let out all the grief and anger the men were feeling at that point in time. Reading further, there are themes such as justice, racial barriers, tyrannical and so on, which butter the source of distress for these Chinese men.
By reading these poems, readers are able to understand the sort of trauma these Chinese detainees went through at the Angel Island.
Sources
http://www.cetel.org/angel_poetry.html
