Jade Snow Wong

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Jade Snow Wong (}; }; 1922 - 16 March 2006) was an American ceramicist and author of two volumes of autobiography.[San Francisco Chronicle Obituary, March 19, 2006]

Born in San Francisco and brought up in a traditional Chinese manner, she adopted the many customs of her family. Thanks to her family's heavy emphasis on education and her own desire to learn, Wong went on to graduate from Mills College in 1942. Afterwards, she worked as a secretary during World War II and continued to study ceramics after the War. She discovered a talent at the art, and began to sell her works in a shop in Chinatown. Her pottery soon became very popular, and she also began to realize her talent in literature. In 1950, she published her the first of her two volumes of autobiography, Fifth Chinese Daughter. Fifth Chinese Daughter was translated into several Asian languages by the U.S. State Department, which in 1953 sent her on a four-month speaking tour in Asia. "I was sent," Wong wrote, "because those Asian audiences who had read translations of Fifth Chinese Daughter did not believe a female born to poor Chinese immigrants could gain a toehold among prejudiced Americans." The next volume, No Chinese Stranger, was published in 1975. Her pottery work was later put on display in many art museums nation-wide. Towards the end of her life Snow ran a travel service on Polk Street in San Francisco, the city in which she died on March 16, 2006.

Jade Snow Wong's work was featured in a 2002 [exhibition] at the Chinese Historical Society of America in San Francisco.

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