poem four / Nellie Wong at Ninety
NELLIE WONG celebrates her ninetieth birthday with the publication of Nothing Like Freedom, her fifth collection, after Dreams of Harrison Railroad Park (1977), Death of Long Steam Lady (1986), Stolen Moments (1997), and Breakfast Lunch Dinner (2012). “Nellie Wong at Ninety” is a digital companion project centered around nine poems, chosen by Nellie to represent each decade of her storied life.
“A world without ghosts,” Hung Liu tells us, “is like a person without a shadow, an idealized yet impossible fantasy. The ghosts symbolize our rich, complicated, most times rather painful history and memory. Only after embracing the ghosts inside and outside us, we then have a better understanding of ourselves, our time, and our mission.” Embracing the art of Hung Liu is to act, for she summons the ghosts for us.
— from Summoning Ghosts – The Art of Painter Hung Liu by Nellie Wong, Oct. 2016)
Nellie continues to explore her relationship to her ancestral homeland, aware that she herself is a bridge, as the first American-born child to her immigrant parents.
Nellie recently found her written report about the 1983 American Women Writers Tour to China. Her participation in “Brown Palms, Yellow Balms,” provides great opportunity to share her perspective about this historic exchange, a moment in time that speaks today to our continually unfolding future.
In her poem, Tell These Hands, Nellie Wong records a meeting with the legendary revolutionary writer Ding Ling (1904 – 1986), one of the most celebrated Chinese women writers of the 20th century. When Tillie Olsen extended the invitation to join the group, which included noted authors Alice Walker and Paule Marshall, Nellie became the sole Chinese American delegate on the tour. She was about to be laid off from her longtime job working as a secretary at Bethlehem Steel, and she would have to pay her own way, but Nellie decided that she must seize this opportunity to visit her ancestral homeland.
“Ding Ling was a prolific author of revolutionary China. Her early short stories focusing on young Chinese women greatly influenced the world of socialist and feminist literature. One of her notable works, “When I Was in Xia Village,” inspired several of my own poems. How fortunate to meet my literary heroine during the First American Women Writers Tour to China in 1983.”
Through poetry, Nellie honors the women who brought her into this world, while speaking to the conditions of women the world over. Nellie shares cherished memories forged in Ding Ling’s home in China, fingers caress indigo, porcelain, peony and wood. The phoenix flies and women warriors are called to battle. One woman’s observations channeled through her fingertips, becoming poetry, sound and fury, moving through time immemorial.
 A gift from Ding Ling – Nantong Chinese Blue Calico |