William Gee Wong

William Gee Wong is a print journalist, author, and amateur historian. A native of Oakland, California's Chinatown, William received his B.A. at the University of California at Berkeley and M.S. at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

William's 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, William 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.

William is the author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America (Temple University Press, 2001), Images of America: Oakland's Chinatown (Arcadia Publishing Co., 2004), Sons of Chinatown: A Memoir Routed in China and America (Temple University Press, 2024), and co-author of Images of America: Angel Island (Arcadia Publishing Co., 2007). More info, www.williamgeewong.

Sons of Chinatown: A Memoir Rooted in China and America

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Born 1941 in Oakland, California’s Chinatown, William Gee Wong is the only son of his father, known as Pop. Born in Guangdong Province, China, Pop emigrated to Oakland as a teenager during the Chinese Exclusion era in 1912 and entered the U.S. legally as the “son of a native,” despite having partially false papers. Sons of Chinatown is Wong’s evocative dual memoir of his and his father’s parallel experiences in America.

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