Nellie Wong

Nellie Wong (September 12, 1934 – January 2, 2026) was an American poet and activist for feminist and socialist causes. Wong was also an active member of the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women.

Biography Wong was born in Oakland, California, to Chinese immigrants. Her father had immigrated to Oakland in 1912. Wong was a Chinese American poet, feminist, and socialist who has organized and participated in activist groups working to create better conditions for women, workers, and minorities.

During World War II, the Wong family worked in a grocery store in Berkeley. The group performed at colleges, universities, and community centers. During this time she encountered members of two affiliated socialist feminist organizations, Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party, and within a few years had joined their ranks.

In 1983, Wong traveled to China on the first U.S. Women Writers Tour to China sponsored by the US–China Peoples Friendship Association with Tillie Olsen, Alice Walker, Paule Marshall. Also in 1983 she was a major organizer of the Merle Woo Defense Committee. Woo, a lesbian Korean-Chinese American feminist, had filed a complaint against their former employer alleging wrongful termination based on discrimination. Working with other Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women members, Wong raised funds and awareness of the case.

During the 1980s and 1990s, Wong was keynote speaker at many national and regional conferences, including Third World Women and Feminist Perspectives, Women Against Racism, and the National Women's Studies Association. She has recited her poetry in China, Cuba, Australia, and throughout the U.S. She has also participated on panels concerning labor, Asian American literature, and poetry. Furthermore, Wong has taught Women's studies at the University of Minnesota and poetry writing at Mills College in Oakland, California.

In 2019, Wong, Genny Lim and Flo Oy Wong began performing together as The Last Hoisan Poets, conducting special poetry readings in English and Hoisan-wa (also known as Taishanese, a Yue Chinese dialect native to Taishan, Guangdong) to pay homage to their mother language which is at risk of fading from collective memory.

Excerpts from two of her poems have been permanently installed as plaques at public sites at the San Francisco Municipal Railway. She received awards from the Women's Foundation (San Francisco), University of California, Santa Barbara's Asian American Faculty and Staff Association, and the San Francisco-based Kearny Street Workshop, a multidisciplinary art collective. She served many years as the Bay Area organizer of the Freedom Socialist Party, and remained active with the party, Radical Women, and Bay Area United Against War. She later resided in San Francisco.

Wong died from ovarian cancer at her home in San Francisco, on January 2, 2026, at the age of 91.

Work To mark her 90th birthday, poet and activist Nellie Wong's fifth collection of poetry, Nothing Like Freedom, published by HoongHoongLookLook Press, bridges the decades of her remarkable career, with work that spans the 1970s to the present (2024). Wong's first collection of poetry, Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park (1977), was published by Kelsey Street Press. This book went through four printings and was the most successful release in the history of Kelsey Street Press. Her other titles are The Death of Long Steam Lady (1986), published by West End Press and Stolen Moments (1997). Her work has appeared in approximately 200 anthologies and publications.

Wong writes directly from her working life; she states "A lot of my poems come from the workplace; that's where I've experienced a great deal of sexism and racism." Other themes include her family history and Asian American identity, about which she has said, "I care about the roots of Asian American culture and how and why they came here [...] It's something every Asian family has experienced." Her poetry spans issues of feminism, the fight against racism, workplace injustice, and finding identity as a writer and activist. In 2022, she received a Reginald Lockett Lifetime Achievement Award from PEN Oakland.