Nellie Wong, an acclaimed poet, feminist, socialist, labor activist, and organizer, died Jan. 2 in her San Francisco home from ovarian cancer. She was 91.
Nellie was born on Sept. 12, 1934, in Oakland Chinatown. She was part of a family of nine — five immigrants and four American-born members — that operated the Great China Restaurant in Oakland from 1943 to 1961.
Nellie attended Oakland High School when her family moved to a neighborhood outside of Chinatown after World War II, the beginnings of integration for ethnic Chinese residents who’d lived under the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943).
Her early life, into her late 20s, was rooted in the patriarchal culture in Chinatown and the white American mainstream. That oppression did not sustain her. Nellie’s intelligence, creativity, and compassion yearned to break free.
An excerpt from Nellie Wong’s “In Search of the Self as Hero” in “This Bridge Called My Back.” Credit: Andi Wong
At Oakland High, she worked part-time as a secretary in the principal’s office. She earned praise for her clerical and administrative organizational skills, a precursor to a future as a working-class advocate and organizer.
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From 1964 to 1982, Nellie worked at the San Francisco office of the Bethlehem Steel Corporation in an administrative capacity. Her working-class life continued at the University of California, San Francisco, in various administrative assistant and analyst positions in the affirmative action office from 1984 to 1998.
In her mid-30s, Nellie married James Balch, who, along with Nellie’s sister Flo Oy Wong, urged her to write, given her enthusiastic oral reviews of movies and TV shows and her pithy, humorous family newsletters. (She later divorced James.)
The world around her was changing to become more inclusive, a product of the 1960s civil rights movement that spawned the feminist movement and the empowerment of non-white communities, including her Chinese cohort.
In the 1970s, Nellie enrolled at the Oakland Adult Evening School and San Francisco State University, taking classes in ethnic and feminist studies and creative writing. Classmates influenced and encouraged her to write, as well.
At that time, she discovered her burgeoning poetic voice, which she used to express her working-class Chinese American immigrant background. She also joined the Freedom Socialist Party and its affiliated Radical Women organization around this time.
This obituary is part of an Oaklandside remembrance collection, honoring some the remarkable lives lived in this city. If you’d like to submit an obit for a loved one in our next collection, please get in touch.
Her growing political and creative journey included teaching poetry writing at Mills College in Oakland and women’s studies at the University of Minnesota. It also led to five published books of poetry: “Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park” (1977), “The Death of Long Steam Lady” (1984), “Stolen Moments” (1997), “Breakfast Lunch Dinner” (2012), and “Nothing Like Freedom” (2024, on her 90th birthday).
At times soft-spoken but always friendly, breaking often into a warm smile, Nellie openly thirsted to feed her political, artistic, and cultural interests. She read voraciously and widely poetry from around the world, often re-reading works and re-watching movies and TV dramas, especially Korean and Chinese shows. She also devoured international films at specialized theaters.
At many public protests advocating for social justice, however, Nellie’s voice was anything but soft.
She co-founded and led feminist artistic groups such as Unbound Feet with Nancy Hom, Genny Lim, Canyon Sam, Kitty Tsui, and Merle Woo, and the Last Hoisan Poets with Genny Lim and her younger sister, Flo.
Nellie and a distinguished Japanese American writer, Mitsuye Yamada, were featured in “Mitsuye & Nellie: Asian American Poets,” a 1980 documentary by San Francisco filmmakers Irving Saraf and Allie Light.
Nellie Wong. Credit: Andi Wong
Her political activism and prolific writing took her far and wide, both within the United States and overseas to Australia, Cuba, and even to the homeland of her parents and three older sisters. The itinerary for her 1983 trip to China with prominent feminist writers such as Tillie Olsen and Alice Walker didn’t include her ancestral village. Through persistence, Nellie made that personal side trip, connecting with distant clan cousins.
Nellie won many honors and recognition, among them having excerpts of poems inscribed at two different sites of the San Francisco Muni system, a building in her name at Oakland High, and a 2022 Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN Oakland.
Her last book, “Nothing Like Freedom,” was published in 2024 to honor her 90th birthday by HoongHoongLookLook Press, a venture she and her friend, artist and educator Andrea (Andi) Wong, established outside the traditional publishing world.
Nellie wrote up until the last days of her life, working on a forthcoming book, “December Sonata,” composed of poems she wrote after learning of her terminal illness.
In a 2002 essay, Revolutionary Love (Expose), published in HEArt, a publication of Human Equity Through Art, Nellie summarized her life’s political and writing mission.
“Deep in my heart and through my life experiences,” she wrote, “there is no better way to live than to fight for a better world. That sounds trite, but it isn’t. I love the idea of making change for the disenchanted, the dispossessed, not in a ‘do good’ manner for the sake of being altruistic, but for the possibilities that we humans with our spirit and fortitude can fight for. Writing poems details those challenges.”
Nellie is survived by her sister, Flo Oy Wong; brother, William Gee Wong; brother-in-law, Edward K. Wong; and three generations of nieces and nephews, totaling 39.
A celebration of life memorial will be held on Saturday, Feb. 14, from 1-4 p.m, at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center, Pacific Renaissance Plaza, 388 9th St., Suite 290, two blocks from where Nellie was born.
Instead of flowers and other objects, please contribute in Nellie’s honor to the Freedom Socialist Party San Francisco.
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