Genny Lim, a native of San Francisco and a longtime voice for the Asian American community, has made history as the city’s first Chinese-American poet laureate.
At her inauguration ceremony, Lim delivered a powerful reading of her poem “I Am American,” reflecting on identity, inclusion, and resilience.
“I am American. We live, love, work, sleep and breathe / In this Babylon of 48 hills…” she began, setting the tone for her new role.
Lim, a poet, playwright, performer, and educator, said she never imagined holding such a prominent civic title.
“When that history hit me, it was almost overwhelming,” Lim told CBS News Bay Area.
The significance of her appointment is magnified by her family’s personal history. Her parents were detained at Angel Island under the Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal policy that restricted Chinese immigration to the U.S. for decades.
“Coming from that history of exclusion to being included—and not only included, but celebrated as a Chinese-American—is really remarkable,” she said.
Lim shared family artifacts with CBS News Bay Area, including transcripts from her relatives’ interrogations at Angel Island, where immigrants were often subjected to lengthy questioning.
“If you passed the interrogation, you got in; fail, and you got shipped out,” Lim explained.
Her father arrived in San Francisco as a child with his father, but when her grandfather later attempted to re-enter the U.S., he was denied and deported. Lim said this left her father effectively abandoned in America and raised by extended family.
“He never talked about that episode of his life because it was very traumatic for him,” she said.
Lim, who grew up in North Beach and Chinatown, has spent decades working to preserve and share the voices of Asian American immigrants. In the 1970s, she helped translate Chinese poetry that had been discovered etched into the walls of the Angel Island detention barracks. The work was published in the book Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, which she co-authored.
“I realized these are the first poems written by Chinese in America,” she said.
These writings documented the hardship and hope of early immigrants. Lim read aloud from one of the translated poems:
“How can I gain relief from these oppressive laws? / I await the time of our victory for then we can be free.”
As poet laureate, Lim hopes to use her three-year term to expand poetry’s presence across the city. Her plans include bringing poetry festivals to underserved neighborhoods and launching a youth poet laureate program.
“I would love literature and poetry to become an everyday beloved activity,” she said.
Her appointment marks both a personal and collective milestone—an opportunity, she says, for more Americans to share their own stories.
She concluded her inaugural reading with a call to empowerment:
“This is what it takes to / Smash the window of despair / To fly through the looking-glass air / With wings spread wide / Proclaiming—I am American!”
Lim’s final words were met with applause, underscoring a moment of poetic justice for San Francisco’s past—and its future.
