IRONING, IRONING (For Tillie Olsen) Like a drunken fool I pick out the wrinkles linen and shirt, the foam-green dress, the black, long sleeve T and I drink ice cold glasses of lemon tea as the temperature lingers at 90 plus degrees. When I ironed as a 12-year old, I listened to the radio. Imogene Coco and Sid Caesar battled in their boisterous humor, the Lone Ranger and his faithful companion, Tonto, rode in clouds…
Hung Liu. Strange Fruit: Comfort Women, 2001, oil on canvas, 80 x 160. Private collection. http://www.hungliu.com/comfort-women.html Seven women, strange fruit, stare at you Their eyes awash with tears dripping, cast downward onto yellow straw hats, their fingers at rest but for one, stern without malice, pulls you into paint, a butterfly with purple and white wings of unheard voices as comfort women unsurreal, their lives forsaken in droughts, the moisture of art in world war…
On the first day of school the teacher asked me: What do your parents call you at home? I answered: Nellie. Nellie? Nellie? The teacher stressed the l’s, whinnying like a horse. No such name in Chinese for a name like Nellie. We shall call you Nah Lei which means Where or Which Place. The teacher brushed my new name, black on beige paper. I practiced writing Nah Lei Holding the brush straight, dipping the…
Three Seasons (Vietnamese title: Ba mùa) is a 1999 American film shot in Vietnam about the past, present, and future of Ho Chi Minh City in the early days of Doi Moi. It is a poetic film that tries to paint a picture of the urban culture undergoing westernization. The movie takes place in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. As the characters try to come to terms with the invasion of capitalism, neon signs,…
My very first poem, We can Always, was published in the anthology, Poetry from Violence, published in 1975 by Allie Light for the San Francisco Conference on Violence Against Women. Allie Light and Ann Hershey taught “Woman as Creative Agent” in the early 70’s at San Francisco State University. I credit that class for my writing, as well as the class where the professor told me I should discard my angry poems. Just a bit…
DING LING (1904 – 1986) Nellie writes, “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.” Tell These Hands In a modest…
Angels of earth and agate, silver splinters Battling death, gliding and swooping, skimming the seas when Chinese warriors Jiu Jin and Ding Ling, their wings, their wings Dive and wash, dine with Owen Dodson and Tillie Olsen, American, Effervescence of words dotting breastplates, dotting their bodies in Finery of hungry ghosts of concubines and blacksmiths who Galvanize streams and rivers, haw flakes red and glistening In their mouths, teeth for Justice against random, against planned…
For Remember Rosie Jimenez National Mobilization for Reproductive Justice Rally and Speak-out, San Francisco, California, October 3, 2021 Women who plant rice Women who sew pants Women who weave rugs Women who compose songs Women who launder, who wash and wash Women who clean rooms, who dig ditches Women who agitate for a living wage Women who give their bodies Women who invent Women who dance Women who work And all women work Women who…
We eat chicken feet and we are not dead Our bowls are rimmed with bats and fire flies Our feet pedal sewing machines making blue denim jeans We march in Chinatown protesting discrimination Corona virus has no yellow skin nor brown eyes We are delivery workers, doctors, dancers, actors Our ancestors memorized the number of doors and windows in the home village, whether our fathers had more than one wife Our foremothers sold their bodies…
Oakland Museum of CaliforniaOakland, CAMarch 16 – June 30, 2014 With drips and washes, color, photography and shaped canvases, shelves and artifacts, the art of Hung Liu in her spring exhibit, Summoning Ghosts, at the Oakland Museum of California, feeds the eyes. What a joy it was to be present with the China-born artist’s energy reflected in the retrospective, which will be traveling nationally. This exhibit is a coming home of her work spanning from…