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.
Flo Oy Wong is an American artist, curator, and educator, of Chinese-descent. She co-founded the Asian American Women Artists Association (AAWAA) in San Francisco.
A member of The Last Hoisan Poets, with sister poets Nellie Wong and Genny Lim, Flo 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.
made in usa: Angel Island Shhh (1997-2003)
Begun in 1997, made in usa: Angel Island Shhh is an art installation, consisting of twenty-five rice sack flags, in addition to a series of audiotaped interviews, unrecorded telephone and personal interviews.
Influenced by the experiences of her mother and mother-in-law who had immigrated from China, and time spent on Angel Island with her husband Ed, who volunteered as a docent, Flo began creating a series of rice sack flags, “exploring the identity secrets of Chinese immigrants detained and interrogated in the United States.” In 2000, Kearny Street Workshop installed made in usa: Angel Island Shhh (originally entitled “The American Story”) in the Angel Island Immigration Station barracks, sharing the stories of still-living Angel Island detainees (mostly in their seventies or eighties) and descendants of detainees.
”I like the fact that these former detainees are speaking up. They are beginning to understand—through involvement in this project—that they are a significant part of the American landscape. Their past is an American story, a story indeed ‘made in usa.‘”
Flo Oy Wong was born in America in 1938, two years before the closing of the Angel Island Immigration Station. She was the 6th of seven children. Her three older sisters had been born in China, but the childhoods of all seven siblings, both Chinese- and American-born, were profoundly affected legally, emotionally, and socially—by the complexities of their parents’ situation as immigrants.
— “Flo Oy Wong ’made in usa‘ a story in three parts,“ an essay by Moira Roth.
Kearny Street Workshop. (2000) made in usa: Angel Island Shhh: exploring the identity secrets of Chinese immigrants detained and interrogated in the United States.
In 1998, artist and friend Bernice Bing encouraged Flo to speak to Nancy Hom about her desire to mount an exhibition of her rice sack flags on Angel Island. It just so happened that Nancy had been looking for a way for Kearny Street Workshop to revisit Angel Island’s role in immigration history. Flo’s project would bring new stories to light.
As Nancy Hom notes in her introduction to made in usa: Angel Island Shhh, Kearny Street Workshop (KSW) presented the first exhibit about Angel Island in 1976, after Paul Q. Chow, chairman of the Angel Island Immigration Station Historical Advisory Committee (AIISHAC), encouraged KSW artists to visit the Immigration Station barracks. In 1983, the barracks opened to the public, and Chow founded the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF) to continue preservation and educational efforts regarding the site. (https://www.aiisf.org/history)
“In conjunction with artist Flo Oy Wong, KSW is again addressing this issue, this time from the perspective of former Angel Island detainees who, nearly sixty years after detention, are ready to talk about their experience. In Wong’s sensitive interviews with a group of them, she has slowly gathered the details of their stories. Through her encouragement, they have begun to tell their immigration stories and to reveal their true identities. Many of their children have not heard their stories before.”
“The final products—in this case, Wong’s rice sack flags and interviews—give present and future generations artistic, scholastic, and historical documentation of their ancestors‘ lives.”
— Nancy Hom, Executive Director, Kearny Street Workshop (1995-2003)
Flo Oy Wong & Nancy Hom on the ferry to Ellis Island. Kearny Street Workshop’s Tin See Do: The Angel Island Experience, and Angel Island Immigration Foundation traveling exhibit, Gateway to Gold Mountain: The Asian Immigration Experience, Angel Island, 1910-1940 were jointly presented from March 8-May 31, 2003 at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum. Photo by Edward K. Wong.
”On the flags, I alternate using the real or ‘paper‘ names of these detainees, according to their wishes.” “For each person featured, I have printed their names on their flag, and written staccato texts, in red, white and blue, relating to their immigration ‘secret,’ and then I repeat these texts, now typed in black, and conceal them in a small pouch, sewn to the flag.”
I want memories, questions, and history to float from my pieces, which feature secrets of ‘paper’ people revealed and concealed on my cloth rice sacks hand-stitched onto the American flags. I want the silence of invisibility to break as the ‘paper people’ narratives eventually permeate the hearts and minds of those who see the show. I want them to carry these stories home.” — Flo Oy Wong
In 1933, Gee Theo Quee arrived at Angel Island with two daughters from her marriage to Gee Seow Hong, her husband. She also brought a daughter from her first marriage. She was really Gee Suey Ting who had entered the country as a “paper sister” to her spouse. In 1925, she married her husband and then moved to his village of Goon Do Hong. There, she cared for his mother as well as for the infant daughter from his first marriage, which had ended tragically when his first wife died. Each time her husband returned from the U.S. for a visit, she became pregnant, eventually giving birth to two more daughters.
Flo Oy Wong. made in usa: Angel Island Shhh. Flag 13: Gee Theo Quee, 1933
24” x 36” mixed media (rice sack, beads, sequins, stenciled text) Photo: Bob Hsiang.
After a one week stay at Angel Island, Suey Ting and Seow Hong lived apart from one another (the Immigration Service suspected that they were really married) in Oakland’s Chinatown. While Seow Hong and two older girls lived on Webster Street, she and her youngest daughter lived with relatives on Eighth Street. Soon, they reunited and she eventually gave birth to three more daughters and a son.
Today, Gee Theo Quee and Gee Seow Hong overlook Oakland Chinatown in the 723 Webster Legacy Mural painted on the building that was once home to Ai Joong Wah, the Great China restaurant run by the Gee/Wong family from 1943 to 1961.
“Legacy” by Desi Mundo, in collaboration with Flo Oy Wong, Roy Chan and Denise Chinn (2024), located at the corner of 8th and Webster in Oakland Chinatown. Photo: Courtesy of Desi Mundo.
Gee Lai Wah (Lai Chop Webster)(1931-2021) entered the U.S. in 1933 as a two year-old along with her sisters and mother. Due to her young age, she was not interrogated. When an interrogator asked her name, she retorted, “I won’t tell you mine if you don’t tell me yours.”
Flo Oy Wong. made in usa: Angel Island Shhh. Flag 16: Gee Lai Wah, 1933
24” x 36” mixed media (rice sack, beads, sequins, stenciled text)
Photo: Bob Hsiang.
This rice sack flag in the City of Sunnyvale’s Public Art collection, is currently display at the Sunnyvale Community Center, Senior Center where Webster, as the class instructor, once enjoyed played mah jong every week with her friends.
Flo was greatly inspired and supported by Faith Ringgold, who often used the symbolism of the American flag in her art. Flo admired Faith’s creativity and determination to find ways to tell her story. “It was her quilts! The fact that when she wanted to write her children’s books, the publisher said, No! You’re not a storyteller, so there was no way for her to publish. She got so mad, she put her stories on a quilt.”
Flo Oy Wong. made in usa: Angel Island Shhh. Flag 9: Wong So Shee, 1930.
24” x 36” mixed media (rice sack, beads, sequins, stenciled text) Photo: Bob Hsiang.
Wong So Shee, aka Sue Shee Wong, entered the U.S. in 1930 as the wife of a merchant. She used the identification papers of her deceased first son to bring in her brother. Robert, as her son. She was reunited with her husband in Augusta, Georgia, where she raised four American-born children.
Sue Shee Wong had previously spent years apart from her husband after they were married in China. Typical of the Chinese wives whose husbands were Gum Sahn Hauck, Gold Mountain guests, she waited in China in hopes that she would be able to join her husband in the United States in the distant future. As a young girl in China she didn’t know who she would marry. While working in the fields of her village one day her future husband, Wong Yet Chaw, came to call. When he arrived, she snuck a peek at him and saw that he was very handsome. The young couple eventually were married in a ceremony when she traveled from her village to his village of You Tin Cheurn in a wedding sedan chair. Soon after they started their family and he left for America.
— excerpted from Sue Shee Wong: Baby Jack’s Mama (part II), a short story written by Flo Oy Wong for Gwah Gai: Crossing the Street (2013)
Flo Oy Wong, Sue Shee Ran The Corner, 1993.
28″ x 32″, Rice, Sack, Silkscreened Photos, Sequins, Thread
Photo: Bob Hsiang
In 1949, the Wong family moved from Augusta, Georgia to Oakland, California. It was there, that Sue Shee’s 18 year-old son, Ed was driving along Webster Street when he first spied a 13 year-old Flo Oy Wong crossing 8th Street in Oakland Chinatown.
Ed and Flo were married in 1961.
In 2023, Flo and Ed Wong celebrated Flo’s 85th birthday with family & friends at Imperial Soup in Oakland Chinatown, where she and her siblings once worked, as ‘kitchen kids’ in the family restaurant, The Great China.
Photo (top): Courtesy of Ed & Flo Wong
Photo (bottom): Andi Wong
The Wong Family & the Angel Island Immigration Station
Flo Oy Wong has always credited her husband Ed Wong as the inspiration for made in usa: Angel Island Shhh. After retiring from a career in engineering in 1992, Ed volunteered as a docent at the Angel Island Immigration Station—a position that he held from 1996 to approximately 2000. Flo often accompanied Ed to the island, and she was enthralled by the stories that he told.
Ed reflected upon his interest in Angel Island history. “Ever since I learned that my mother, brother Ted and Uncle Robert were detained at Angel Island when they immigrated to the United States in 1930, I was intensely interested in our family’s immigration history there. Beginning in the late 1970s, I visited the immigration Station several time—once with my mother shortly before she died. Upon seeing the detention barracks, she muttered in Cantonese: ‘That is the jail.’ The station was not open for visits then, but as she walked around the grounds, she recalled many memories. For example, as she walked up the path to the location of the Administration Building,* she remembered the area where she obtained fresh linen weekly.”
Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation:
Vault #12: Administration Building:
A look inside the Bureau of Immigration’s Headquarters on Angel Island.
https://www.aiisf.org/vault/administration
*The administration building burned on August 12, 1940, destroying dormitories, restaurant, offices, and public areas. Fortunately, the Immigration Station’s most valuable records were locked in two steel and concrete vaults or inside filing cabinets rescued from the building. Yet, not all immigration records survived. Many thousands of documents stored in the attic were destroyed.
The most significant losses included hundreds of records relating to Chinese laborers (1887-1905), several series of administrative records, and 35,000 deportation records.
REFERENCES
Flo Oy Wong. https://flooywong.ddns.net/
Hom, N., Wong, F., Wong, W., Roth, M. (2000). made in usa: Angel Island Shhh: exploring the identity secrets of Chinese immigrants detained and interrogated in the United States, Kearny Street Workshop.
Naumann, R. Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation: Vault #12: Administration Building: A look inside the Bureau of Immigration’s Headquarters on Angel Island. https://www.aiisf.org/vault/administration