Description
Research files, oral histories,
photographs, and writings from historian Judy Yung with a focus on Angel Island Immigration
Station and the experiences of Chinese American women in the twentieth century.
Background
Judy Yung (1946-2020) was a historian of Chinese American history working in the Bay Area.
Born and raised in San Francisco's Chinatown, Yung earned a BA from San Francisco State
University and an MA in Library Science from University of California, Berkeley. Her first
job was as a librarian at the Chinatown Branch of the San Francisco Public Library, where
she became keenly aware of the lack of materials about Chinese Americans and specifically
Chinese Americans women. As a librarian with the Oakland Public Library, she helped build up
the first Asian American branch library in the United States. Collaborating with Him Mark
Lai and Genny Lim, Yung published Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on
Angel Island, 1910-1940 (Chinese Cultural Center of San Francisco, 1980) to
preserve the Chinese poems carved into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station by
former detainees. Yung's connection to Angel Island was a personal one, as her father had
been detained on the island in 1921. Yung began collecting oral histories as part of the
Island project and soon embarked on a much larger oral history project to
document the experiences of Chinese American women. In 1981, she received funding from the
Women's Educational Equity Program to organize an exhibit on Chinese American women, which
she then expanded into Chinese Women of America: A Pictorial History
(University of Washington Press, 1986). Yung returned to UC Berkeley to obtain a PhD in
Ethnic Studies in 1994 with her dissertation, which she expanded into Unbound Feet: A
Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (University of California Press,
1995). In 1990, she was hired as a professor in American Studies at UC Santa Cruz. There she
taught Asian American history, women's studies, and oral history courses until her
retirement in 2004. Yung continued to research and write on the experiences and social
history of Chinese Americans, publishing Unbound Voices: A Documentary History of
Chinese Women in San Francisco (University of California Press, 1999);
Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Present, co-edited with
Gordon Chang and Him Mark Lai (University of California Press, 2006); San Francisco's
Chinatown (Arcadia Publishing, 2006); and Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway
to America, co-authored with Erika Lee (Oxford University Press, 2010). In 2003,
Yung married Eddie Fung, the only Chinese American soldier captured by the Japanese during
World War II. She recorded over fifty hours of interviews with Fung, resulting in the
publication of The Adventures of Eddie Fung: Chinatown Kid, Texas Cowboy, Prisoner of
War (University of Washington Press, 2007). After Fung's death in 2018, Yung moved
back to San Francisco's Chinatown to continue her public history work, where she passed away
in December 2020.
Restrictions
While Special Collections is the owner of the physical and digital items, permission to
examine collection materials is not an authorization to publish. These materials are made
available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any transmission or reproduction
beyond that allowed by fair use requires permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or
assigns. Some series within this collection have additional or differing copyright
restrictions.