Tuesday, January 21, 2025 China Basin Park

Celebrating National Angel Island Day with an outdoor pop-up with poetry by Genny Lim and Nellie Wong, music by Del Sol members Charlton Lee & Kathryn Bates, and art with Andi Wong.

We were joined by Lan Shaw, President of Oakland Ballet, whose upcoming ballet, Angel Island Project, premieres on May 4, 2025 at the Paramount Theatre in Oakland, featuring choreography by Natasha Adorlee, Phil Chan, Lawrence Chen, Ye Feng, Elaine Kudo, Ashley Thopiah, and Wei Wang. The ballet is inspired by the music from composer Huang Ruo’s Angel Island: Oratorio, commissioned by the Del Sol Quartet, which premiered on Angel Island in 2021.

Also for National Angel Island Day, enjoy an online screening of “Mitsuye and Nellie: Asian American Poets” which will be available January 21-27.  Register here.

The poetry, ideas and memories of Mitsuye Yamada, Japanese American and Nellie Wong, Chinese American are juxtaposed with rare newsreels and photos of seldom glimpsed areas of U.S. history. “Mitsuye and Nellie” creates a moving and challenging double portrait of two women whose poetry expresses with dramatic clarity, the immigrant experience of Asian American women in a society contemptuous and suspicious of “Orientals.”

In this film, poetry does more than comment on history—it presents the historical fact blindingly and without compromise.

— text from a mailer for the 1981 film by Allie Light & Irving Saraf.