ACTIVISM

FSP / Radical Women

FSP: Movie review – “Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space” (February 2024)Nellie on Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming a Space, a two-hour documentary produced in 2023 by PBS for the American Experience series.
FSP: “The Long Hot Wars” (November 12, 2023) Poet Nellie Wong kicks off the No 2 APEC event at Harry Bridges Plaza with her poem, “The Long Hot Wars.”
FSP: Book Review – Black reparations: a vision for achieving real justice (February 2023)Nellie on Emily Woo Yamasaki’s A Revolutionary Call for Black Reparations” at Red Letter Press.
FSP: Interiority, hey? (June 2022)A lyrical look by poet-revolutionary Nellie Wong on sense of self as an Asian American woman versus the racist perceptions of others.
FSP: Nellie Wong reads “We Eat Chicken Feet and We Are Not Dead” (April 23, 2020)Noted Bay Area poet Nellie Wong examines rising anti-Chinese/Asian bigotry in the United States as part of historic attempts to pit workers against each other in the interests of the bosses. She reads two poems: “Where is my country?” and “We eat chicken feet and we are not dead”.
FSP: When my world opened (August 2019)“I was too busy already. Married. Me, an activist? A thinker, a doer? An organizer?” Bay Area poet Nellie Wong describes her journey into radical politics.
FSP: The Long Hot Summers (July 5, 2019)A stirring poem by Nellie Wong delivered at a July 5, 2019, “Stop Deportations!” protest in San Francisco initiated by the Freedom Socialist Party.
FSP: Breakfast Lunch Dinner book review: luscious poems by Nellie Wong on love, family, revolution (December 2012)Book review by Chris Faatz on Nellie Wong’s Breakfast Lunch Dinner, published by San Francisco’s Meridien PressWorks.
FSP: Oakland students choose to name building for radical poet Nellie Wong (December 2011)Article by Toni Mendicino about the Nellie Wong Building, “a beautiful, modern, two-story structure housing the Departments of English and Science, and a computer lab,” named by the students at Oakland High School.
FSP: Nellie Wong: Feminist revolutionary and poet to visit Australia (Winter/Spring 2009)Article includes extracts from “Fashion Violence from the Toes Up, March 2007; the poem, My Eyes Follow Them (2002), and “Women & revolution — alive and inseparable!” a speech by Nellie Wong to Radical Women’s 41st Anniversary Conference, October 3, 2008.
FSP: Who We Are: The Asian American Community (Summer 1982)Nellie Wong presented this speech in February 1981 at the San Francisco “Left-write Conference: A Unity Conference of Writers on the Left.
FSP: A conversation with Nellie Wong & Merle Woo, poet-radicals by Karen Brodine (Spring 1981)Karen Brodine, San Francisco poet and organizer of Radical Women, interviews Merle Woo and Nellie Wong, Asian American poets affiliated with the Women Writers Union and Unbound Feet, two groups of San Francisco/Bay Area feminist writers. The article also includes Woo’s poem Yellow Woman Speaks.
FSP: Asian American women speak out by Sukey Durham (Spring 1980)Mitsuye Yamada, Merle Woo, and Nellie Wong, keynote speakers at a January 26 forum sponsored by San Francisco Radical Women, paid tribute to the role of women of color in the feminist movement, focusing in particular on the perspective of Asian American women.
Radical Women: Socialist and feminist cultureThe Radical Women website resource includes Nellie Wong’s poems, We Eat Chicken Feet and We Are Not Dead and Women of the World

Broadcasts & Podcasts

KQED Forum: First Person: Poet Nellie Wong on Writing and Fighting for Radical Social Change (February 7, 2020)As part of Forum’s First Person series, which profiles Bay Area figures who make the region unique, host Mina Kim talks to Wong about her life, poetry and experience fighting for social change.
KPFA 94.1: Special Broadcast: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (March 7, 2021)Writers read from the poems, essays and personal narratives they contributed to this remarkable anthology. This Bridge Called My Back launched new perspectives on identity, its complications and contradictions – especially for feminist women of color.  The book and the cultural conversation it opened helped establish third wave feminism and intersectionality.

This program features Cherrié Moraga, one of the book’s editors, and eight writers: Nellie Wong, Merle Woo, Aurora Levins Morales, Barbara Cameron, Judit Moscowitz, Andrea Canaan, and Barbara & Beverly Smith. Hosted by Julia Randall
leapmanproductions: 100 Years of Angel Island – San Francisco Poet Laureates Part 1Angel Island Celebrates its 100th Year since opening in January 21, 1910. Reading of Chinese, Japanese and Russian poems by San Francisco Poet Laureates Casey Lee, Janice Mirikitani, and Nellie Wong.
3CR: Chinese-American feminist activist and poet Nellie Wong talks about her recent book Talking back (April 21, 2015)3CR spoke with Nellie Wong, editor of the book “Talking Back, Voices of Colour”, published by Red Letter Press. Talking back is an anthology featuring voices of youth, political prisoners, immigrants and history-makers. In Melbourne, the book was launched on Saturday May 2, 2015 at Solidarity Salon, 580 Sydney Road, Brunswick.