Linda Wong Huang has chronicled her life in drawings and paintings. Her drawings were featured in several of the Voice of Gom Benn newsletters. This is her story.
I credit my older sister Ellen for introducing me and my sister, Julie, to art. After winning a Christmas card contest in elementary school, Ellen decided that she was going to be an artist. She had a big influence on me in learning to appreciate and create art. Starting in elementary school, Ellen gave us art lessons in an adjacent sunroom in our home that she had set up as a studio. One time when my dad needed to go into Los Angeles to pick up Chinese groceries for our family’s Chungking restaurant, Ellen, who had gotten her driver’s license, managed to drop my dad off and took us to our very first art museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). This was the beginning of our lifelong interest in going to art museums together. So, it seemed natural that the three of us sisters would major in art in college.
At UC Riverside, I took several art classes. One class taught by James Turrell (now a prominent American light and space artist) was inspirational in getting us to look at things in different ways. One of his assignments was to draw our dreams. I was so excited by this idea, I couldn’t wait to go to sleep. I had to quickly draw my dream after I woke up before going to class. From this exercise, I discovered and developed a new way to express my world through simple drawings which I still enjoy doing to this day.
Our parents, Voy and Fay Wong, had five children, Ellen, Don, Janlee, me and Julie. We grew up in the 1950s and 60s in Riverside, Calif. We had one of the only Chinese restaurants, Chungking, in Riverside at the time and we were the only Wongs in the phone book. Living in a white community, we kids became very Americanized, but we never felt fully accepted because we were Chinese. My parents were hardworking immigrants. We helped out at the restaurant cashiering, busing and waiting on tables. My first job was filling the egg basket for one penny. A lot of my artwork reflected this cultural dichotomy.
In college, I experienced an identity crisis after attending a summer school program in Taiwan. I had wanted to embrace my Chinese heritage when I was there, but the Chinese in Taiwan didn’t accept me either because I was too Americanized. Feeling conflicted, I used my art as a way to work out my feelings of what was I: Chinese or American? I discovered that there were other Asians who felt the same way. The Asian-American movement was born out of the civil rights movement during this time (1970s). I was an Asian American! I transferred from UCR to Cal (Berkeley) mainly to experience an Asian-American community.
After college, steady jobs and raising a family took priority over trying to establish an art career. I knew that no matter what I was doing though, I would never lose my creative spirit. I worked for IBM for 14 years as an education administrator and recently retired from the California Academy of Sciences. My husband, Carey, and I have a daughter, Keilin, and a son, Mark.
Thank you for featuring my sister’s story through art and words. This is just a glimpse of the many facets of her creativity and interests. For example, Linda introduced me to the world of opera and we’ve had long discussions about the free streaming Met Opera productions of the last year. The pandemic paused our getting together, but now we’re looking forward to our next art museum visit soon.
I’m so happy and thankful to have grown up with her love and support.
Thank you for featuring my sister, Linda. My brother Don and I weren’t art majors in college but we too were very influenced by our sister Ellen, and also by Linda and my other sister Julie. Many Chinese families hope their children become professionals such as doctors and lawyers but I’m proud of my sisters and of their art. My sisters taught me art is a perspective, of the artist but also of the beholder. The deeper you see the perspective, the more feelings and emotions come forth, again of the artist of the beholder. Linda’s restaurant art reflects to me the Chinese immigrant experience in the one dimensional (white) bubble of Riverside. As Linda said, we were in that in between world, neither “white American” nor “yellow Chinese.” And it also brings forth many feelings and emotions about how our parents loved us and worked so hard to raise us. They didn’t have time to help us with our identity struggles so we had to learn it on our own through the Asian American movement.
Pingback: Part 8: Fay Wong’s Proverbs - Gom Benn Scholarship Fund