Szejnert revels in quoting juicy gossip ... American prejudice is a recurrent theme in the book. To readers today, its overtness can seem quite shocking, a reminder of how a society’s sensitivities change ... Ellis Island: A People’s History contributes to our knowledge of the island’s history through its Polish (and Polish Jewish) perspective. In Sean Gasper Bye’s skillful translation, and with lots of archival pictures, the book is also a pleasurable read for anyone wanting to know more about those who immigrated to the United States and those who, because of prejudice or sheer bad luck, never made it.
Szejnert has a style distinguished by pithy realism, deft plotting via recurring details and motifs, and deep dives for the not-so-ordinary words and deeds of ostensibly 'ordinary people' ... Szejnert resists any such hierarchy or objectification in presenting her human subjects ... Generally evenhanded, Szejnert may cede a bit more space and detail in Ellis Island to those whose professional training or empathetic character moved them to treat the dirty, seemingly uncivilized arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe as fellow human beings, Americans in the making ... Far from reprising traditional accounts of the early-twentieth-century “American immigrant experience,” Szejnert’s Ellis Island: A People’s History leads us down as many surprising, sobering paths as the corridors connecting almost all of the buildings on the island... Guided by a keenly perceptive, curious foreigner, we emerge from her reportage with vivid, individualized memories of newcomers’ hardships endured, nativist fears aroused, official injustices carried, and the wide range of goodwill efforts invested in the processing and treatment of the more than sixteen million people who risked everything to resettle in the United States.
... a vibrant addition to the sizable bibliography in English [on Ellis Island] ... Drawing freely on letters, diaries, photographs and oral histories, most of the book recounts what Ellis Island was like for immigrants and government employees. Some of the most poignant passages draw from hundreds of letters sent back home—when Poland was absorbed into Russia—by Polish immigrants ... Though Szejnert’s book first appeared in 2009, its translation now is a reminder that the United States need not be defined only by a border wall.
...a new history of the island that covers the years 1774 (when Samuel Ellis, a merchant in colonial New York and the island’s namesake, bought it) to 2003 (when current members of the Leni Lenape tribe, who were pressured into “selling” the island to the Dutch West India Company in 1630, were allowed to exhume the remains of their ancestors)—works this way. She provides a plethora of raw data, including nationality quotas, how many people arrived on ships, the date when commissioners left their post—but her primary mode of storytelling is encouraging her audience to read between the lines, and her book does much in the service of contextualizing immigration to the US as fraught with discriminatory snap judgments on the merits of arriving individuals’ human value, rather than a triumphant articulation of American values, with a welcome mat in New York harbor.
Making extensive use of primary documents, including letters written by immigrants to family in the old country, the author captures the mingled hope and fear experienced as people entered the massive main building, equipped with modern accoutrements few had seen in their ancestral villages, and faced numerous bureaucratic barriers. Quotes from John Weber, the first Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York, and his successors make palpable the massive logistical effort required to process all these people ... Szejnert reveals countless intriguing historical tidbits ... The author also evokes the island’s ghostly atmosphere after it was abandoned in 1954 and the determined efforts that led to its triumphant 1990 reopening as a museum, visited by 2 million people each year. Warmly human and extremely moving—a welcome addition to the Ellis Island literature.
... a kaleidoscopic history ... Szejnert humanizes the immigrant experience in late 19th- and early 20th-century America. Genealogy buffs and history fans will celebrate this engrossing portrait.
