Poetry in Chinatown

Four Chinese American poets come together for a dynamic reading on heritage and perspectives. They will be joined by Mike Taylor, songwriter, and Katie Taylor for a music interlude. Tickets are available at Eventbrite.com

Nellie Wong

Nellie is a member of various literary, artistic, and political groups, including Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party. In 1989, she received a Women of Words award from the San Francisco Women’s Foundation. With Mitsuye Yamada, Nellie was the subject of the documentary Mitsuye & Nellie, Asian American Poets (1981). Nellie’s poems have been installed in public sites in the San Francisco area. In 2011, a building at Oakland High School was named after Wong.

Clara Hsu

Clara is the director of Clarion Performing Arts Center, a non-profit charitable organization in San Francisco that provides music lessons, workshops, theater and music events. She leads a weekly poetry group at the On Lok Senior Center, and is a member of the Grant Ave Follies, a senior cabaret dance troupe that performs throughout the Bay Area and beyond. Clara incorporates poetry into the cabaret shows and dramatic elements in literary readings. She reads in English and Cantonese, a dialect of the Chinese language.

Genny Lim

Genny is the author of the poetry collections Winter Place (1989), Child of War (2003), and Paper Gods and Rebels (2013); the children’s book Wings for Lai-Ho (1982); and the plays Paper Angels (1978) and Bitter Cane (1989), among others. Her work appears in The Politics of Life: Four Plays by Asian American Women (1993), the Oxford Book of Women’s Writing in the United States (1995), and Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island (1980). Lim is the winner of the 1981 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. In 1982, she founded a theater company, Paper Angels Productions, now known as Theatre XX, a company that performs experimental theater. Lim has taught at the New College of California, and her papers are held at UC Santa Barbara.

Jeffrey Leong

Jeffrey is a poet and writer who worked as a public health administrator and attorney for the City of San Francisco. He earned his MFA in Writing at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author of Wild Geese Sorrow: The Chinese Wall Inscriptions at Angel Island, the first new translation of this work in almost 40 years. His writing has focused on the Asian American experience including adoption, multiracial families, and student activism during the 1960s. He lives with his wife and daughter in the East Bay.