Nellie Wong
Encyclopedia
Nellie Wong is a poet
and activist for feminist and socialist causes.
to Chinese immigrants
. Her father had immigrated to Oakland in 1912.
During World War II
, the Wong family worked in a grocery store in Berkeley
. The internment
of her Japanese American
neighbors left a profound impact on her intellectual development, sensitizing her to issues of racism
and the concerns of Asian American
s. The family borrowed $2,000 to start a restaurant, The Great China, in Oakland's Chinatown
, where Wong worked as a waitress during her youth. She attended public school, graduating from Oakland High School
, and started bull work as a secretary
for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, a position she held until 1982. She later served as senior analyst in affirmative action
at the University of California, San Francisco
(UCSF).
While in her mid-30s, Wong began studying creative writing
at San Francisco State University
(SFSU) and began to write and publish her poetry
. Wong credits her feminist classmates at SFSU with encouraging her writing. A male professor had once told her to throw away an angry poem she had written. One classmate told her, "You don't have to listen to him!"
While a student at SFSU, Wong was involved with the campus Women Writers Union, which organized around issues of race, sex, and class. There she encountered members of two affiliated socialist feminist organizations, Radical Women
and the Freedom Socialist Party
, and within a few years had joined their ranks.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Wong co-founded the Asian American
feminist literary and performance group Unbound Feet. The group, which also included the lesbian
poet, educator, and activist Merle Woo
, performed at colleges, universities and community centers.
In 1983, Wong traveled to China on the first U.S. Women Writers Tour to China sponsored by the US–China Peoples Friendship Association with Tillie Olsen
, Alice Walker
, Paule Marshall
, among others.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Wong was keynote speaker at many national and regional conferences, including Third World Women and Feminist Perspectives, Women Against Racism, and the National Women's Studies Association. She has recited
her poetry in China, Cuba
, and throughout the U.S. She has also participated on panels concerning labor, Asian American literature, and poetry. Furthermore, Wong has taught Women's studies
at the University of Minnesota
and poetry writing at Mills College
in Oakland, California.
Excerpts from two her poems have been permanently installed as plaques at public sites at the San Francisco Municipal Railway
. She has received awards from the Women's Foundation (San Francisco), University of California, Santa Barbara
's Asian American Faculty and Staff Association, and the San Francisco-based Kearny Street Workshop
, a multidisciplinary art collective. She served many years as the Bay Area organizer of the Freedom Socialist Party, and is still active with the party, Radical Women, and Bay Area United Against War. She currently resides in San Francisco.
Wong writes directly from her working life; she states "A lot of my poems come from the workplace; that's where I've experienced a great deal of sexism and racism." Other themes include her family history and Asian American identity, about which she has said, "I care about the roots of Asian American culture and how and why they came here [...] It's something every Asian family has experienced." Her poetry spans issues of feminism, the fight against racism, workplace injustice, and finding identity as a writer and activist.
In 1981, Wong participated with Mitsuye Yamada
in the documentary film Mitsuye & Nellie, Asian American Poets, produced by Allie Light and Irving Saraf. The film recounts the experiences and hardships that affected the writers and their families. Significant to the film's focus is how World War II and the bombing of Pearl Harbor encouraged divisive perceptions of Japanese as "bad" Asians, while the Chinese were seen as "good" Asians. "Can't Tell," one of the poems Wong recites in the film, highlights the author's attempt to understand why her Japanese neighbors were being sent to internment camps when she and her family, as Chinese American
s, were considered patriotic citizens.
The film also shows lively exchanges between Wong and her siblings, highlighting the feistiness of her older sister, Li Keng, and her youngest sister, Flo Oy Wong, an installation art
ist. Her brother, William Wong, is a journalist and the author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America.
Her papers are housed at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives
.
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
and activist for feminist and socialist causes.
Biography
Wong was born in Oakland, CaliforniaOakland, California
Oakland is a major West Coast port city on San Francisco Bay in the U.S. state of California. It is the eighth-largest city in the state with a 2010 population of 390,724...
to Chinese immigrants
Chinese immigration to the United States
Chinese American history is the history of Chinese Americans or the history of ethnic Chinese in the United States. Chinese immigration to the U.S. consisted of three major waves, with the first beginning in the 19th century. Chinese immigrants in the 19th century worked as laborers, particularly...
. Her father had immigrated to Oakland in 1912.
During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the Wong family worked in a grocery store in Berkeley
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
. The internment
Japanese American internment
Japanese-American internment was the relocation and internment by the United States government in 1942 of approximately 110,000 Japanese Americans and Japanese who lived along the Pacific coast of the United States to camps called "War Relocation Camps," in the wake of Imperial Japan's attack on...
of her Japanese American
Japanese American
are American people of Japanese heritage. Japanese Americans have historically been among the three largest Asian American communities, but in recent decades have become the sixth largest group at roughly 1,204,205, including those of mixed-race or mixed-ethnicity...
neighbors left a profound impact on her intellectual development, sensitizing her to issues of racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and the concerns of Asian American
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...
s. The family borrowed $2,000 to start a restaurant, The Great China, in Oakland's Chinatown
Chinatown
A Chinatown is an ethnic enclave of overseas Chinese people, although it is often generalized to include various Southeast Asian people. Chinatowns exist throughout the world, including East Asia, Southeast Asia, the Americas, Australasia, and Europe. Binondo's Chinatown located in Manila,...
, where Wong worked as a waitress during her youth. She attended public school, graduating from Oakland High School
Oakland High School (California)
Oakland Senior High School is a public high school in California. Established in 1869, it is the oldest high school in Oakland, California and the sixth oldest high school in the state.-Background:...
, and started bull work as a secretary
Secretary
A secretary, or administrative assistant, is a person whose work consists of supporting management, including executives, using a variety of project management, communication & organizational skills. These functions may be entirely carried out to assist one other employee or may be for the benefit...
for the Bethlehem Steel Corporation, a position she held until 1982. She later served as senior analyst in affirmative action
Affirmative action
Affirmative action refers to policies that take factors including "race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or national origin" into consideration in order to benefit an underrepresented group, usually as a means to counter the effects of a history of discrimination.-Origins:The term...
at the University of California, San Francisco
University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world...
(UCSF).
While in her mid-30s, Wong began studying creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
at San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University
San Francisco State University is a public university located in San Francisco, California. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers over 100 areas of study from nine academic colleges...
(SFSU) and began to write and publish her poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
. Wong credits her feminist classmates at SFSU with encouraging her writing. A male professor had once told her to throw away an angry poem she had written. One classmate told her, "You don't have to listen to him!"
While a student at SFSU, Wong was involved with the campus Women Writers Union, which organized around issues of race, sex, and class. There she encountered members of two affiliated socialist feminist organizations, Radical Women
Radical Women
Radical Women is a socialist feminist, grassroots activist organization that provides a radical voice within the feminist movement, a feminist voice within the Left, and trains women to be leaders in the movements for social and economic justice...
and the Freedom Socialist Party
Freedom Socialist Party
The Freedom Socialist Party is a socialist political party with a unique program of revolutionary feminism that emerged from a split in the United States Socialist Workers Party in 1966. It is currently a working class organization that works towards creating social justice and order for all...
, and within a few years had joined their ranks.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Wong co-founded the Asian American
Asian American
Asian Americans are Americans of Asian descent. The U.S. Census Bureau definition of Asians as "Asian” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent, including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan,...
feminist literary and performance group Unbound Feet. The group, which also included the lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
poet, educator, and activist Merle Woo
Merle Woo
Merle Woo has worked as a spokesperson, teacher, poet and activist throughout her life.-Biography:Merle Woo was born to a Korean mother and Chinese father, Helene Chang and Richard Woo, in San Francisco on October 24, 1941. She grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown with her mother, a clerical...
, performed at colleges, universities and community centers.
In 1983, Wong traveled to China on the first U.S. Women Writers Tour to China sponsored by the US–China Peoples Friendship Association with Tillie Olsen
Tillie Olsen
Tillie Lerner Olsen was an American writer associated with the political turmoil of the 1930s and the first generation of American feminists.-Biography:...
, Alice Walker
Alice Walker
Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...
, Paule Marshall
Paule Marshall
Paule Marshall is an American author. She was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn to Barbadian parents and educated at Girls High School, Brooklyn College and Hunter College . Early in her career, she wrote poetry, but later returned to prose...
, among others.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Wong was keynote speaker at many national and regional conferences, including Third World Women and Feminist Perspectives, Women Against Racism, and the National Women's Studies Association. She has recited
Poetry reading
A poetry reading is a performance of poetry, normally given on a small stage in a café or bookstore, although poetry readings given by notable poets frequently are booked into larger venues to accommodate crowds...
her poetry in China, Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
, and throughout the U.S. She has also participated on panels concerning labor, Asian American literature, and poetry. Furthermore, Wong has taught Women's studies
Women's studies
Women's studies, also known as feminist studies, is an interdisciplinary academic field which explores politics, society and history from an intersectional, multicultural women's perspective...
at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
and poetry writing at Mills College
Mills College
Mills College is an independent liberal arts women's college founded in 1852 that offers bachelor's degrees to women and graduate degrees and certificates to women and men. Located in Oakland, California, Mills was the first women's college west of the Rockies. The institution was initially founded...
in Oakland, California.
Excerpts from two her poems have been permanently installed as plaques at public sites at the San Francisco Municipal Railway
San Francisco Municipal Railway
The San Francisco Municipal Railway is the public transit system for the city and county of San Francisco, California. In 2006, it served with an operating budget of about $700 million...
. She has received awards from the Women's Foundation (San Francisco), University of California, Santa Barbara
University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
's Asian American Faculty and Staff Association, and the San Francisco-based Kearny Street Workshop
Kearny Street Workshop
Kearny Street Workshop in San Francisco, California, is the oldest multidisciplinary arts nonprofit addressing Asian Pacific American issues.The organization's mission is to produce and present art that enriches and empowers Asian Pacific American communities....
, a multidisciplinary art collective. She served many years as the Bay Area organizer of the Freedom Socialist Party, and is still active with the party, Radical Women, and Bay Area United Against War. She currently resides in San Francisco.
Work
Wong's first collection of poetry, Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park (1977), was published by Kelsey Street Press. This book went through four printings and was the most successful release in the history of Kelsey Street Press. Her other titles are The Death of Long Steam Lady (1986), published by West End Press and Stolen Moments (1997). Her work has appeared in approximately 200 anthologies and publications.Wong writes directly from her working life; she states "A lot of my poems come from the workplace; that's where I've experienced a great deal of sexism and racism." Other themes include her family history and Asian American identity, about which she has said, "I care about the roots of Asian American culture and how and why they came here [...] It's something every Asian family has experienced." Her poetry spans issues of feminism, the fight against racism, workplace injustice, and finding identity as a writer and activist.
In 1981, Wong participated with Mitsuye Yamada
Mitsuye Yamada
Mitsuye Yamada is a Japanese American activist, feminist, essayist, poet, story writer, editor, and former professor of English.-Early and personal life:Mitsuye Yamada was born as Mitsuye Yasutake in Fukuoka, Japan...
in the documentary film Mitsuye & Nellie, Asian American Poets, produced by Allie Light and Irving Saraf. The film recounts the experiences and hardships that affected the writers and their families. Significant to the film's focus is how World War II and the bombing of Pearl Harbor encouraged divisive perceptions of Japanese as "bad" Asians, while the Chinese were seen as "good" Asians. "Can't Tell," one of the poems Wong recites in the film, highlights the author's attempt to understand why her Japanese neighbors were being sent to internment camps when she and her family, as Chinese American
Chinese American
Chinese Americans represent Americans of Chinese descent. Chinese Americans constitute one group of overseas Chinese and also a subgroup of East Asian Americans, which is further a subgroup of Asian Americans...
s, were considered patriotic citizens.
The film also shows lively exchanges between Wong and her siblings, highlighting the feistiness of her older sister, Li Keng, and her youngest sister, Flo Oy Wong, an installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
ist. Her brother, William Wong, is a journalist and the author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America.
Her papers are housed at the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives
California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives
California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives is an archival institution that houses collections of primary source documents from the history of minority ethnic groups in California...
.
Further reading
- The Making of a Poem: A Norton Anthology of Poetic Forms. Edited by Mark Strand and Eavan Boland (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2000).
- Review of Stolen Moments. Reviewed by Cindy Lum. Hawaii Pacific Review. Volume 13 (1999), Hawaii Pacific University, Honolulu, HI.
- Revolutionary Spirits: Profiles of Asian Pacific American Activists, by Dana Kawaoka, American Studies Senior Thesis, June 1, 1998.
- Mitsuye & Nellie, Asian American Poets. Allie Light & Irving Saraf. Women Make Movies. 1981. 58 min.
- On Women Turning 60: Embracing the Age of Fulfillment. Interviews and photography by Cathleen Rountree (New York: Harmony Books, 1997).
- Women: Images and Realities, A Multicultural Anthology. Edited by Amy Kesselman, Lily D. McNair, Nancy Schniedewind (Mountain View, CA:, Mayfield Publishing Company, 1995).
- A Formal Feeling Comes. Edited by Annie FinchAnnie FinchAnnie Finch is an American poet. She is author of numerous books of poetry as well as poetry translation, poetry anthologies and criticism, opera libretti, and poetic collaborations with visual art, music, theater, and dance. Her writings on poetry address topics including meter and prosody,...
(Brownsville, OR: Story Line Press, 1994). - Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography. Edited by King-kok Cheung and Stan Yogi. (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1988).
- Guide to Women's Literature throughout the World. Edited by Claire Buck (Bloomsbury Publishing, 1994).
- Feminists Who Changed America, 1963-1975. Edited by Barbara J. Love (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2006).