This list focuses on Angel Island and Asian American history with a focus on Chinese American history. For other sources on race, ethnicity, and immigration in the United States, please see our Research Guides page.
Aarim-Heriot, Najia. Chinese Immigrants, African Americans, and Racial Anxiety in the United States, 1848-82. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
Ahmad, Diana L. The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth Century American West. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2007.
Barde, Robert Eric. Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger Ships, Exclusion, and Angel Island. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008.
Ceniza Choy, Catherine. Asian American Histories of the United States. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2022.
Chen, Shehong. Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2006.
_____. Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882-1943. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991.
Daniels, Roger. Asian America: Chinese and Japanese in the United States since 1850. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1995.
Egan, Charles. Voices of Angel Island: Inscriptions and Immigrant Poetry, 1910-1945. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Academic, Bloomsbury Publishing Inc, 2021.
Gyory, Andrew. Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
Hing, Bill Ong. Making and Remaking Asian America through Immigration Policy, 1850-1990. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.
Hsu, Madeline Y. Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration Between the United States and South China, 1882-1943. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002.
Lai, H. Mark, Genny Lim, and Judy Yung. Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2014.
Lee, Erika and Judy Yung. Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Lee, Erika. At America’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
_____. The Making of Asian America: A History. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2016.
Ngai, Mae. The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of the Chinese American. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012.
Salyer, Lucy E. Laws Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Studies in Legal History). Second Edition. Chapel Hill, NC and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian America. Boston, MA, New York, NY, and London: Back Bay Books, 1998.
Yung, Judy. The Chinese Exclusion Act and Angel Island: A Brief History with Documents. Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2019.