Book Summary and Reviews of Bridge Across the Sky by Freeman Ng

Book Summary

A raw and honest 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.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

1. Consider the title of the novel. How does the title Bridge Across the Sky signify the journey that Tai Go and his family will take and endure? Discuss the differing expectations Tai Go, his father, and his grandfather have about their future in America. What are each family member's hopes at the end of the "bridge" and why might these desires exist for the characters in the story? What elements of personal growth and self-discovery do they make while on their journey?
2. What is the significance of the topic Freeman Ng has chosen to write about? Why does this matter?
3. What is the reality that Tai Go is faced with while in detention? What aspects of world and American history has he now become a part of, whether he realizes it...