Judith "Judy" Yung was a librarian, community activist, historian and professor emerita in American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
13 Facts About Judy Yung
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Judy Yung specialized in oral history, women's history, and Asian American history.
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Judy Yung died on December 14,2020, in San Francisco, where she had returned in 2018.
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Judy Yung was the fifth daughter of six children born to immigrant parents from China.
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Judy Yung grew up in San Francisco Chinatown, where her father worked as a janitor and her mother as a seamstress to support the family.
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Judy Yung spent four years working as associate editor of the East West newspaper.
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In 1975, inspired by the discovery of Chinese poetry on the walls of the Angel Island detention barracks, Judy Yung embarked on a research project with Him Mark Lai and Genny Lim to translate the poems and interview former Chinese detainees about their immigration experiences.
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From 1981 to 1983, with a federal grant from the Women's Educational Equity Program, Judy Yung directed the Chinese Women of America Research Project, resulting in the first traveling exhibit on the history of Chinese American women and the book, Chinese Women of America: A Pictorial History.
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Judy Yung then returned to graduate school to hone her research skills as a historian.
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Judy Yung has since devoted her time to writing more books about Chinese American history and serving as a historical consultant with a number of community organizations and film projects.
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In 2002, while working on Chinese American Voices, Judy Yung met Eddie Fung, a POW during World War II.
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Judy Yung appears in the 2021 documentary The Six, in which she explains the significance of a Chinese poem written by RMS Titanic survivor Fong Wing Sun, and Chinese poetry written by Chinese immigrants while being held at Angel Island in the 1920s and 1930s.
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Judy Yung died on December 14,2020, of complications from a fall at her home.