Import test ONLY: The Writing on the Wall

According to "The Writing on the Wall," who wrote the poems etched into the walls of Angel Island?

• educated men among the Chinese immigrants

• well-known poets among the Chinese immigrants

• bored Chinese Americans waiting to travel back to China

• angry Chinese politicians working for change at Angel Island

According to "The Writing on the Wall," why did people decide to preserve the poems on the walls of the detention center?

• The poems are great examples of classical Chinese literature.

• The poems document the experiences of hundreds of immigrants.

• The poems record the history of the Angel Island detention center.

• The poems describe what it was like to be a Chinese American in the early 1900s.

Which of the following is the feeling most often expressed by the poets quoted in "The Writing on the Wall"?

• anger

• regret

• dismay

• loneliness

Identify the choice that best answers the question. If an immigrant can be said to keep a memento from a place, which of the following must be true?

• He or she would not want to go back there again.

• He or she would want to send it back to that place.

• He or she would not want to forget having been there.

• He or she would want to share it with many other people.

If an immigrant can be said to have composed a poem, which of the following must be true?

• He or she read it out loud to an audience.

• He or she drew upon personal thoughts or feelings to create it.

• He or she used a variety of tools to carve it into a wall.

• He or she repeated verses that had been memorized in the past.

If a poem can be said to have been inscribed, which of the following must be true?

• It had to be memorized and recited out loud.

• It had to be recorded in some way on a surface.

• It had to be another poem from another century.

• It had to be a Chinese symbol for a word or sound.

Part A: Which of the following statements best expresses the author’s opinion of the poems discovered at Angel Island?

• The poems are well written and use sophisticated techniques.

• The style of the poems is too old-fashioned, but the imagery is beautiful.

• The ideas and feelings explored in the poems are interesting, but the poems are not well written.

• The poems are artifacts that reveal the history of Angel Island, not truly poetry in the traditional sense.

Part B: Which quotation from “The Writing on the Wall” best supports the answer to Part A?

• The Chinese immigrants, in particular, raised with a tradition of public poetry, composed carefully crafted verses that drew on Classical traditions, forms, and allusions.

• The poets held at the Angel Island Immigration Station were partaking of a centuries-old tradition, creating a camaraderie far beyond the confines of the walls they found themselves isolated inside.

• Here we are, at least 60 years after this poem was penned, with a man from a different country, reading this lonely man’s words and sharing them with people who have come to read them.

• Because so many of the poets actually spoke to each other in their “posts,” we know that the poems mattered to the people to whom they were addressed at the time.

Read this quotation from “The Writing on the Wall.” Imagine you have traveled on a ship from China to America. Imagine it is sometime between 1910 and 1940, and you may or may not know the man who you will call your father when you arrive in the new country whose language you likely do not know. Imagine that when you arrive . . . you are taken to . . . Angel Island. Which of the following is a reasonable conclusion to draw from this quotation?

• Angel Island was used as an immigration station from at least 1910 until at least 1940.

• Some Chinese immigrants were quite fluent in English and adapted easily.

• Immigration from China to the United States was unrestricted after 1940.

• Immigration from China to the United States became severely restricted in 1910.

Part A: According to “The Writing on the Wall,” how did the men who wrote poems on the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station feel about who and what they had left behind them in China?

• They were glad to have severed ties to their former lives.

• They were eager to return to China and to their previous situations.

• They were saddened by memories of their lives in China.

• They were cheered by knowing that people in China were counting on them.