Bridge Across the Sky (Paperback)

Freeman Ng

ISBN 10: 1665948604 / ISBN 13: 9781665948609

Published by Simon & Schuster, New York, 2025

About this Item

Paperback. A lyrical and introspective (Publishers Weekly, starred review) historical novel in verse about a Chinese teen who immigrates to the United States with his family and endures mistreatment at the Angel Island Immigration Station while trying to navigate his own course in a new world.Tai Go and his family have crossed an ocean wider than a thousand rivers, joining countless other Chinese immigrants in search of a better life in the United States. Instead, theyre met with hostility and racism. Empowered by the Chinese Exclusion Act, the government detains the immigrants on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay while evaluating their claims. Held there indefinitely, Tai Go experiences the prison-like conditions, humiliating medical exams, and interrogations designed to trick detainees into failure. Yet amid the anger and sorrow, Tai Go also finds hopein the poems carved into the walls of the barracks by others who have been detained there, in the actions of a group of fellow detainees who are ready to fight for their rights, in the friends he makes, and in a perceived enemy whose otherness he must come to terms with. Unhappy at first with his fathers decision to come to the United States, Tai Go must overcome the racism he discovers in both others and himself and forge his own version of the American Dream. A stunning verse novel about a Chinese immigrant teen and his family whoin pursuit of the American Dreamare forcibly detained at the Angel Island Immigration Station. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability.

Seller Inventory # 9781665948609

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Bridge Across the Sky (Paperback)
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster, New York
• Publication Date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1665948604
• ISBN 13: 9781665948609
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

A “lyrical and introspective” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) historical novel in verse about a Chinese teen who immigrates to the United States with his family and endures mistreatment at the Angel Island Immigration Station while trying to navigate his own course in a new world.

Tai Go and his family have crossed an ocean wider than a thousand rivers, joining countless other Chinese immigrants in search of a better life in the United States. Instead, they’re met with hostility and racism. Empowered by the Chinese Exclusion Act, the government detains the immigrants on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay while evaluating their claims.

Held there indefinitely, Tai Go experiences the prison-like conditions, humiliating medical exams, and interrogations designed to trick detainees into failure. Yet amid the anger and sorrow, Tai Go also finds hope—in the poems carved into the walls of the barracks by others who have been detained there, in the actions of a group of fellow detainees who are ready to fight for their rights, in the friends he makes, and in a perceived enemy whose otherness he must come to terms with.

Unhappy at first with his father’s decision to come to the United States, Tai Go must overcome the racism he discovers in both others and himself and forge his own version of the American Dream.

About the Author

Freeman Ng is a former Google software engineer who’s now writing full time. Though he lived most of his life a twenty-minute ferry ride from Angel Island and his father entered the country through a process similar to the one described in Freeman’s Bridge Across the Sky (except through Seattle), he never thought about the station and its history until he heard about the poems on the walls. Then he knew he had to write about them, and that it had to be in verse. Visit him at AuthorFreeman.com.