Author William Gee Wong reads from and discusses his book, Sons of Chinatown: A memoir rooted in China and America, a dual memoir of his and his father’s parallel experiences in America.

The author’s father entered the U.S. legally as the “son of a native,” despite having partially false papers, and he himself was born and raised in Oakland’s Chinatown. Wong received his B.A. at the University of California at Berkeley and M.S. at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His print journalism career was spent at The Wall Street Journal (1970-1979) and The Oakland Tribune (1979-1996). He also worked for The San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco News Call Bulletin, and has written for the San Francisco Examiner, East West: the Chinese American Journal, and Asian Week, among other publications.

In the mid-1960s, he served in the Peace Corps in the Philippines.

From 1995-1996, he was a regional commentator for The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on PBS.

He is the author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America (Temple University Press, 2001), Images of America: Oakland’s Chinatown (Arcadia Publishing Co., 2004), and co-author of Images of America: Angel Island (Arcadia Publishing Co., 2007).

Bill’s sister, the poet Nellie Wong, lives just up the street from the bookshop, is a frequent customer, and also frequently reads her poems from the bookshop’s stage to appreciative audiences long familiar with her work.