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Title details for Ellis Island by Małgorzata Szejnert - Available

Ellis Island

A People's History

by Małgorzata Szejnert
Sean Gasper Bye
Audiobook
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From Annie Moore, the Irishwoman who was the first to be processed there, to Arne Peterssen, the Norwegian who was the last to be taken away from the island in 1954, Ellis Island weaves together the personal experiences of forgotten individuals with those who live on in history: Fiorello La Guardia, Lee Iacocca, and other American leaders whose paths led them to the Island for various reasons.
Award-winning journalist Małgorzata Szejnert draws on unpublished testimonies, memoirs, archival photographs, and correspondence from many internees and immigrants. But also brought to life are the Ellis Island employees: the doctors, nurses, commissioners, interpreters, social care workers, and even chaperones, who controlled the fates of these émigrés—often basing their decisions on pseudo-scientific ideas about race, gender, and disability. Sometimes families were broken up, and new arrivals were detained and quarantined for days, weeks, or even months.
All told, the island compound spent longer as an internment camp than as a migration way-point—in addition to filling other roles through the years, including that of rescue station in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. Now brought back to life by a master storyteller, this is a story of a place and its people, steeped in politics and history, that reshaped the United States.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    June 15, 2021

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781666123036
      • File size: 294282 KB
      • Duration: 10:13:05

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 15, 2020
      Polish journalist Szejnert delivers a kaleidoscopic history of Ellis Island told primarily through the accounts of immigrants who arrived there seeking entry into the U.S. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources including letters, memoirs, and official government records, Szejnert personalizes the era’s immigration statistics by foregrounding the experiences of people such as Ludmila Foxlee, a Czech immigrant who passed through Ellis Island with her family as a nine-year-old in 1894 and then became a social worker and patron of immigrant families; Paula Pitum, a disabled Russian Jewish girl whose family fought her deportation with the support of neighbors in Olean, N.Y.; and Ellis Island physician Victor Safford, whose personal reflections on immigrant racial types serve as an entry point into Szenjert’s discussion of the impact of racial classification on U.S. immigration policy. With fine-grained details and fluid writing, Szejnert humanizes the immigrant experience in late 19th- and early 20th-century America. Genealogy buffs and history fans will celebrate this engrossing portrait.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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