I Bow My Land Poem Summary

Due mainly to the Chinese immigration act of the late 1800s thousands upon thousands of Chinese immigrants were detained in a prisonlike facility on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. Between 1910 in the early 1940s close to 175,000 Chinese immigrants were processed at this Angel Island facility. These were people that came to America seeking a better life a life free of oppression and poverty, a life of freedom to pursue their happiness in whatever form they chose. But for most Chinese immigrants arriving to the shores of Gold Mountain these immigrants didn’t find a fortune and freedom they were seeking what they found was oppression and rancid prisonlike conditions in some cases worse than the atrocities they fled from home.

The walls of
Though we don’t know who wrote this poem by name, if we look deep in our heart we all know what was a man or woman that come to our country seeking refuge, but found only pain and suffering. You can feel how hopeless this person’s situation was simply by the words you wrote. The last line of this poem is most heart wrenching line any individual could bring himself to write. To bow your head in reflection and hopelessness knowing there’s nothing you can do is truly the most devastating blow the human psyche can take.

Even though they were eventually released into American society so they can pursue their dreams, the scars that these people bear from the treatment they received upon reaching our shores will forever be etched in stone a silent scream at the atrocity and pain inflicted upon the innocent who sought nothing more than a better life for themselves and their families. As human beings we must never forget the pain and suffering felt by those that called this island home, be there words ring on throughout eternity so that we as Americans will never forget the innocent people came to our shores seeking freedom and interns were imprisoned for months or years before being allowed to receive their slice of American