At her inauguration as the city’s poet laureate, Genny Lim recites from her poem, “I am American.”
“I am American. We live, love, work, sleep and breathe In this Babylon of 48 hills…” she begins.
As a poet, playwright, performer, and educator, Genny Lim shines a light on the Asian American experience. But the native San Franciscan never expected to be in the spotlight as the city’s first Chinese-American poet laureate.
When that history hit me, it was almost overwhelming,” Lim told CBS News Bay Area.
Overwhelming, considering her family’s immigration story. Her parents were among family members detained at Angel Island as part of the Chinese Exclusion Act, enacted to keep Chinese people out of the U.S.
“Coming from that history of exclusion to being included, and not only included, but celebrated as a Chinese-American is really remarkable,” she smiled.
Lim showed CBS News Bay Area artifacts of her family’s history, including transcripts of the detainees’ interrogation at Angel Island.
“If you passed the interrogation, you got in; fail, and you got shipped out,” she said.
Her father was about 10 years old when he arrived in the Bay Area with her grandfather. But when her grandfather returned to China and tried to re-enter through Angel Island, she said, “I guess he didn’t pass the inquiry and was deported back to China so that left father abandoned.”
Her father was raised by uncles, and Lim doesn’t know much about that chapter of his life.
“He never talked about that episode of his life because it was very traumatic for him,” she explained.
But Lim, who grew up in North Beach and Chinatown has helped make sure we hear others’ stories in their own words.
When Chinese poetry was discovered written and carved into Angel Island’s barrack walls in the 1970s, she helped translate some of the 100 detainees’ poems into English, and shared them in a book she co-authored, Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island.
“I realized these are the first poems written by Chinese in America,” she said.
The pages give voice to the immigrants’ pain and perseverance.
She read from one of the poems, “How can I gain relief from these oppressive laws? I await the time of our victory for then we can be free.”
Today, Lim is celebrating the freedom and power of words.
In her three-year term as poet laureate, she plans to rotate poetry festivals into underrepresented neighborhoods and launch a new youth poet laureate program.
“I would love literature and poetry to become an everyday beloved activity,” Lim said.
So that like her, others can share their unique stories, their experience in America..
“This is what it takes to/Smash the window of despair/To fly through the looking-glass air/With wings spread wide ‘Proclaiming I am American!'” Lim said, ending her inaugural poem with applause.
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Sharon Chin
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