Songs of Gold Mountain: Cantonese Rhymes from San Francisco Chinatown

by Marlon K. Hom

Marlon Hom has selected and translated 220 rhymes from two collections of Chinatown songs published in 1911 and 1915. The songs are outspoken and personal, addressing subjects as diverse as sex, frustrations with the American bureaucracy, poverty and alienation, and the loose morals of the younger generation of Americans. Hom has arranged the songs thematically and gives an overview of early Chinese American literature.

Genres: History, China, Nonfiction, Poetry

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Thomas Ray]

Songs of Gold Mountain, Marlon K. Hom, ed., 1987, 322 pages, Library-of-Congress PL3164.5 E5 C54 1987 Memorial Library.

220 selected verses, in English and Cantonese, of the 1,640 verses of /Songs of Gold Mountain/, published in Cantonese in San Francisco's Chinatown in 1911 (vol. 1) and 1915 (vol. 2).

In 11 categories:
Immigration Blues
Lamentations of Stranded Sojourners
Lamentations of Estranged Wives
Nostalgic Blues
Rhapsodies on Gold
Songs of Western Influence and the American-borns
Nuptial Rhapsodies
Ballads of the Libertines
Songs of the Young at Heart
Songs of Prodigals and Addicts
Songs of the Hundred Men's Wife


At home I was in poverty,
constantly worried about firewood and rice.
I borrowed money
to come to Gold Mountain.
Immigration officers cross-examined me;
no way could I get through.
Deported to this island [Angel Island in San Francisco Bay: detention there instituted in 1910],
like a convicted criminal.
Here--
Mournful sighs fill the gloomy room.
A nation weak; her people often humiliated
Like animals, tortured and destroyed at others' whim.


Each poem in the collection is 46 Chinese characters long, a Cantonese folk tradition. The authors are all anonymous men.

Some 300 of the original 1,640 poems are about family separation. About half of these are written from the woman's point of view; nevertheless, all were written by men.


See Sau-ling C. Wong's "The Politics and Poetics of Folksong Reading: Literary Portrayals of Life under Exclusion," in /Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882-1943/, Sucheng Chan, ed.

[Virginia Pilegard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful!