Bound
Textiles as Material Memory
Created By: Jennifer L. Kerr
Movement performed by: Rebekah Joy and Tatianna Steiner
Immigration stories live on not only in paper-filled archives and government records offices, but in objects that connect future generations to the past. The physical materials that intertwine with immigrant stories create a tactile repository of meaning.
Textiles are bought, sold, traded, and disposed of. They clothe, protect, sustain, and shroud us in death. Through their use, people assert individual identity and maintain cultural traditions. Textiles also bear witness to complicated histories of labor and migration.
In this installation, immigrant stories are represented by fibers that form complicated and tangled webs of significance. Resting inside woven baskets and threaded around the poles, which formerly supported the detention barracks sleeping cots, are yarns I have spun from hemp, wool, seaweed, cotton, flax, and silk–fibers found in the stories of Angel Island immigrants.
In the center of the yarn installation are dancers. Like those previously bound inside the detention spaces, they reside in a space caught between home and hope. Home fades into distant memory, and hope is dimmed by unknowing.
You are encouraged to touch the yarns and experience the fibers. Are they rough or soft? What comes to mind as you engage with them? As you leave the island, contemplate the uncertainty of waiting and consider what textiles might also be tied to your family’s history.
–Jennifer L. Kerr
Wool
FLORA SARA AND LIZZY MARBACH
In 1940, Flora Sara Marbach and her 12-year-old daughter Lizzy fled Austria, boarding the S.S. Rakuyo Maru bound for San Francisco with nearly 100 other Jewish refugees. Her late husband’s family textile factory in Vienna had been confiscated by the Nazis.
The factory may have produced wool using fibers like those that you can touch in this installation. The yarn you see includes uncombed wool locks, smooth processed wool, wool thread, and wool nepps– small pebble-like by-products of wool processing.
The vice president of what is now called Kay Jewelers provided funds that allowed the Marbach’s admittance. Flora passed away at 89 in San Mateo, California.
One can imagine that deep in Flora and Lizzy’s pockets or in the corners of their suitcase, some wool might have stowed away and found its way to Angel Island.
Source: “Flora Sara Marbach, 50, and Lizzy Marbach,12: Fleeing Hitler’s Germany for a New Life in America” by Erika Alvarez. https://www.immigrant-voices.aiisf.org/stories-by-author/748-flora-sara-marbach-50-and-lizzy-marbach-12fleeing-hitlers-germany-for-a-new-life-in-america/
Silk
SAM SHU (HERBERT) HUEY
Sam Shu Huey was born in 1913 in Enping, China into a privileged life. Sam’s land-owning grandfather was a silkworm, rice, and peanut oil merchant with many wives, sons, and daughters.
After his son’s birth, Sam’s father immigrated to the United States alone. Later, in 1923, he returned to China in order to bring his son to the U.S. When father and son arrived at Angel Island, the older man was quickly granted entry, but 10-year-old Sam was detained alone in the adult bunk room for two months. He said, “It was terrible, there were people there for years, months. It was like a prison.”
Sam Shu Huey’s family story is tied up with silk. Can you find the silk cocoons in the yarn in the basket in the installation? Can you rattle the cocoons and hear the lonely silkworms still bound inside?
Source: “Stories from Our Father, Sam Herbert Huey” by Jacqueline Huey, Carolyn Huey Jung, Stephen Sam Huey & Cynthia Huey Chin. https://www.immigrant-voices.aiisf.org/stories-by-author/603-huey-sam-herbert/
Hemp
HELEN HONG WONG
Helen Hong Wong’s grandfather owned a hemp business in China. But after Helen’s home burned down, she moved to Hong Kong at the age of seven.
At 21, Helen married a man 30 years her senior who promised her a good life in America. They purchased identity papers in order to enter under assumed names, and traveled to the United States with Helen posing as her husband’s daughter. They were detained for several months on Angel Island but were eventually granted entry.
Helen worked in restaurants, laundries and a cookie factory in the Midwest, often living in apartments without electricity or heat. “Life has been better for me in America, but I must admit that my Gold Mountain dream was not fulfilled.”
Helen Hong Wong had a tough life. Her story is represented by coarse hemp fibers. Can you feel the roughness of it?
Source: “Reminiscences of a Gold Mountain Woman” by Helen Hong Wong and Judy Yung. https://www.immigrant-voices.aiisf.org/stories-by-author/747-reminiscences-of-a-gold-mountain-woman/