About
Nellie Wong (1934–2025) was one of San Francisco’s most beloved labor poets. Born and raised in Oakland’s Chinatown, she was a poet, feminist, and socialist activist whose work gave voice to the experience of Chinese American working-class women.
She is the author of three books of poetry. Two of her poems are engraved in public sites along the San Francisco Muni system — one at Market and Sanchez Streets, another on the Embarcadero where the F line runs, across from the Levi Strauss building. Her work appears in numerous anthologies and journals, and has been translated into Italian, Chinese, French, and Spanish.
She traveled to China in 1983 as a delegate with the First U.S. Women Writers Tour and keynoted at conferences including the National Women Studies Association and Women Against Racism. Her work and protest poems are featured in the documentary film Mitsuye & Nellie: Asian American Poets.
She spent the majority of her working life as an office worker, retiring as a senior analyst in affirmative action. She represented University Professional & Technical Employees/CWA 9119 as a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council AFL-CIO, and was a longtime leader in Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party — serving as Bay Area branch organizer for 16 years.
She joined the LaborFest Writers in 2008 and brought to every meeting a voice shaped by decades of activism and art. She passed away in December 2025. Her voice is in these pages.
Writing
Foreclosure · 2008
For Carlene Balderama — "Woman shoots self over foreclosure," Taunton, Mass., San Francisco Chronicle, July 14, 2008
Okay, just come on in.
Never mind that I am lying
Here, stone cold.
Doesn’t matter anymore.
Look in the cupboard.
There may be some Cheerios.
In the fridge there may be
Some milk, at least half a pint
To wet your whistle.
Be careful. Don’t stomp
On my body, just walk around
As if you’re in a mausoleum.
Or, better yet, as if you came
To pay your respects.
I faxed my letter
To the mortgage company
This afternoon after I drank
A cup of Starbuck’s coffee.
So, go ahead, Mr. Auctioneer,
See what you can get
For this old house,
Small, cramped, but where
I lived with my husband and kids.
Just go ahead, see
Who the highest bidder is.
Just make sure you feed the cat.
And don’t take away
My husband’s high-powered rifle.
He owns it free and clear.
© Nellie Wong
Getting to Work · from the Oakland Chinatown years
Go wake him up, Ah Nui,
Ah Chew Yen Gung, Stinky Cigarette Uncle,
is late again! Bah Bah’s voice boomed,
but this was a ritual
that fell on my shoulders.
I ran the two blocks
from the Great China Restaurant,
my brown shoes, scuffed but sturdy.
The hallway smelled of Camels and Lucky Strikes, favorites
of Chinese men, the thlon doy,
some who left their wives and babies
in the home villages in Hoisan,
to find work.
Ah Chell Gung had a stubble of beard flecked
with gray, his hair slicked back with pomade.
I ran ahead of him, back
to the Great China, donned my apron
and began to slice tomatoes for lunch.
From the oven, the yellow cake’s fragrance
filled my nostrils and when I finished making
lettuce salads topped with tomato slices, I watched
Ah Chell Fung light up a Lucky Strike, letting
the cigarette dangle
out of his mouth.
Ah Chell Gung let his Lucky’s dangle.
I held my breath. Oh, no,
ashes will decorate the cake!
But Ah Chell Gung, with his eyes focused,
his hands steady,
spread the fresh whipped cream,
crowning the cake filled with heng dell,
fragrant bananas reminding him of home.
© Nellie Wong
Consumed · 2008
Long Island, New York
Wal-Mart employee
34 years old, an African American man
A temporary worker
Stampeded to death at 5:00 A.M.
By 200 shoppers on Black
Friday, day after Thanksgiving.
Who’s to blame?
Wal-Mart’s lack of security?
Many waiting all night
For doors to open
At the crack of dawn?
Wal-Mart’s statement
Through unseen suits
Sends their prayers
Who’s to blame?
The economic crisis?
People whose homes are being foreclosed?
People who don’t know
if their next paycheck may be the last?
People in frenzy to buy
That flat-screen TV
That Nintendo game
That I-Pod, that Blackberry
That barbeque that will cook for hundreds
That Northface jacket
That rocking horse
That Armani knock-off
That pair of Nikes priced
At inflated dollars?
Who’s to blame?
Who’s to blame?
Who’s to blame?
The Dow down 680 points
The official U.S. in recession
The terrorists in Mumbai
The stores opening up at 5:00 AM
Thanksgiving?
© Nellie Wong 2008
Reminiscing About a Chinese Restaurant · 1986
Last night I ate dinner
in a Chinese restaurant
roast pork and mashed potatoes,
rice and corn, a wedge of custard pie.
Others were eating rice
with beancake and cha siu
One man ate corned beef and cabbage
and shimmering Jello cubes
Glasses clang, silverware shook,
Oil sizzled to another Chinese restaurant
to Chinatown, a girl
who washed glasses, wiped forks, knives and spoons,
who typed the next day’s menu
who squeezed oranges for juice,
large, small,
but always fresh.
In the back kitchen in the damp air
a man bakes apple pies and banana shortcakes
a cigarette dangles from his mouth,
his eyes half closed.
When the afternoon off comes,
he shuffles off to his rented room, pulls up his sleeve,
sticks a needle into his arm.
He escapes, orange, delicious,
and I run upstairs, stuff myself
with strawberry pie.
My skin rises in hives,
my skin wants orange, wants delicious.
I awaken. More dishes, more menus.
I refill the sugar jars.
Granules sparkle, I cover them up
and salt shakers take precedence
on the Formica counter
in wooden booths.
Slide and run, run and hide,
wait on those who inhabit
this Chinese restaurant.
A man with a crutch and one leg
limps downstairs from the Aloha Hotel,
sips his dinner of black coffee
and sugared “bombs.”
A shriner and his wife, with wide smiles,
eat halibut steak, rice and gravy
and apple pie.
The shriner shakes his tassel with authority.
He splits one 60-cent dinner
for his two young daughters.
Three slices of whole-wheat bread
for a glass-eyed customer
who smears catsup on each slice,
thick, juicy, oozing over the plate.
This man paints red in my father’s eyes
who shouts to me:
Give him the bottle with the quarter-inch catsup
or we will not survive,
we will not survive.
A young gypsy girl and a sallow old man
sit in the back booth.
He lifts her skirt, caresses
her thigh, feeds her a spoon of rice.
She shivers. I look away.
And I eat and my skin itches,
knows nothing, not its hives,
its question marks.
I return to the Chinese restaurant,
its blinking coffee-cup neon sign.
I read the menu, examine it
inside out. The ink spills.
The calligraphy sprawls.
This Chinese restaurant demands love,
demands attention. Its walls expand,
I slither inside.
What would the glasses, the ovens
and chopsticks tell, what grease
on uniforms, what language
beyond food?
© Nellie Wong 1986