“This book, a rich and remarkable cornucopia of first-hand accounts of immigration by children from the 1880s to the 1950s, allows us to grasp the human meaning of migration. We learn, in vivid, forceful language, what it is like to leave one’s homeland and adjust to an alien environment. We not only discover the hardships that children from Britain, China, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, Scandinavia, and Turkey faced—the culture shocks, the language barriers, and the grinding poverty—but how they were able to surmount adversity and privation. As new generations of child immigrants enter the United States, these accounts help us understand what today’s children from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America go through as they make the passage to America.”—Steven Mintz, professor of history, Columbia University, and author of Huck’s Raft: A History of American Childhood
“Memory and migration merge in this study that explores the oral reminiscences of the elderly as they reflect on a dramatic moment in their childhood: that of passing through one of America’s strictest immigrant control stations, Ellis or Angel Island. With this book, Emmy Werner makes a valuable contribution to the study of childhood.”—Barry Moreno, historian, The Bob Hope Memorial Library at Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty National Monument
"No other historian has given us more voices from children in difficult circumstances than Emmy Werner. In this wonderful book, she takes us to the American entrepots of Ellis Island and Angel Island and introduces us to the many children who came from around the world to the United States in the past century and one half, alone or with their families. We can see the new world from their perspectives. At a time when children are moving more than ever to strange places, Werner's book gives us a much needed historical chapter that shows how children view these changes and how they learn to cope."—Paula Fass, Margaret Byrne Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley, and author of Children of a New World
