Bridge Across the Sky, Freeman Ng
Bridge Across the Sky, Freeman Ng
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Bridge Across the Sky

Author: Freeman Ng

Narrator: Eric Yang

Unabridged: 3 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/27/2024


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 Freeman Ng

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Zana on August 28, 2024

For a story about the Chinese Exclusion Act and immigration detention, this felt really superficial. I kept reading thinking that it'd go deeper, but everything was very surface level. I didn't feel emotionally invested at all. For a Chinese immigrant kid, the MMC read like any other kid in the US.......more

Goodreads review by Cherlynn | cherreading on December 24, 2024

3.5⭐ It's giving Animal Farm vibes 👀🤔 An illuminating novel in verse about the Angel Island Immigration Station and the injustice its inhabitants suffered. This was a part of history that I hadn't known about. I particularly enjoyed the book's exploration of family and social dynamics as well as power......more

Goodreads review by Nicole on August 03, 2024

Thank you Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for the ARC in exchange for an honest review! "Bridge Across the Sky" by Freeman Ng is a powerful historical novel in verse that immerses you in the harrowing experiences of Chinese immigrants detained at Angel Island in the early 20th century. As someone wi......more

Goodreads review by Alisha on November 15, 2024

Trigger Warnings: Suicide, harsh living conditions, explicit content/language Tai Go, a Chinese teen who traveled across the ocean with his father and grandfather to start a new life are met with the Chinese Exclusion Act and forced into the detainee center on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay. T......more

Goodreads review by Gayle on September 17, 2024

This is a novel for Young Adults. I usually very much enjoy reading about cultures other than my own, the immigrant experience in the United States, and stories for young people about the hardships many teens endure to live a life of liberty and opportunity in the this nation. This one was okay but......more