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‘Paper Angels’ dramatizes human cost of Chinese Exclusion Act

The plight of undocumented and unwelcomed refugees, displaced by war or extreme poverty, is an international crisis currently. But it is not a new story.

The play “Paper Angels” by Genny Lim takes place in 1915 on Angel Island in the San Francisco Bay, where some 175,000 Chinese tried to enter the U.S. between 1910 and 1940. However, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred most from setting foot on the mainland. (Later, all Chinese immigration was halted until 1943.)

SiS Productions presents Lim’s award-winning one-act, which sensitively observes a cross-section of those long detained by U.