Fay Chiang raising her hands

Fay Chiang (1952-2017) was a poet, visual artist, and community organizer who worked primarily in New York City’s Chinatown and the Lower East Side for more than 45 years. Raised in the backroom of a laundry in Queen by immigrant parents from Guangdong, China, Fay dedicated her life to writing about her experiences as a working class woman of color. She believed that culture was a weapon to reclaim our past, define our present, and envision possibilities for our future.Chiang famously directed the Basement Workshop, a seminal Asian American multi-disciplinary arts initiative in the early 70s, that left a lasting imprint on Asian American arts and culture on the East Coast and beyond. She was a long term cancer survivor and peacefully passed in her sleep on a Friday morning in October 2017.