Island Bound: Women Making History gathers, preserves and shares the stories of inspiring women whose collective action helped to carry Angel Island history forward into the future.
Nellie Wong is is an American poet and activist for feminist and socialist causes. Wong is also an active member of the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women.
The daughter of Chinese immigrants, Nellie Wong was born in Oakland Chinatown in 1934. Her writing explores her Chinese American identity, drawing upon her family’s journey from China through Angel Island to Oakland, CA.
Nellie’s reading of “It’s in the Blood,” a poem introducing her three China-born and three US-born siblings, appears in the 1981 film, Mitsuye and Nellie: Asian American Poets. Her work has appeared in over 200 anthologies and publications, including the 1981 feminist anthology, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color.
Poet Nellie Wong reads four poems from Island at the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation Centennial Program on January 21, 1910. Video by Jeffrey Gee Chin, leapmanproductions.
A member of The Last Hoisan Poets, with sister poets Genny Lim and Flo Oy Wong, Nellie traces her roots to China’s Hoisan villages, home of the Hoisan-wa (a.k.a. Toisanese/Taishanese) Chinese dialect. Together, they conduct special poetry readings in English and Hoisan-wa, to pay homage to their mother language which is at risk of fading from collective memory.
In 2024, Wong’s fifth collection of poetry, Nothing Like Freedom, was published, in celebration of her 90th year; her 50th as a published poet.