Strangers from a Different Shore

In Strangers from a Different Shore Takaki explores competing visions of the US, examining how people have perceived and experienced the country across different nationalities and generations. In developing this theme Takaki reveals the sharp contrasts between first wave Asian immigrants’ initial expectations of the US and the reality of their lives there.

Takaki explains that first-wave Japanese immigrants imagined the US as a land of wealth where “money grew on trees” (45). Similarly, Chinese immigrants imagined the US as “Gam Saan,” or “Gold Mountain,” where they could find better jobs and easily become wealthy. As one Chinese poem said, “If you have a daughter, marry her quickly to a traveler to Gold Mountain / For when he gets off the boat, he will bring hundreds of pieces of silver” (231). Filipino immigrants, too, associated the US with prosperity and imagined that after a few years of working in the US, they would return “with cash rolls bulging in their pockets […] to pay off the mortgages on their lands and recover their family homes” (62). American labor contractors encouraged these romanticized images, since they wanted to entice these workers into signing contracts with American employers. They traveled through Asian towns showing movies about “glorious adventure” and “beautiful opportunities” in the US, persuading many Asians to immigrate (60).