Darlene Wone Papers

Darlene Wone (also known as Mei Oye, and Mei Oye Soo Hoo in the 1970s and 1980s) is a Brooklyn-born Chinese American and college graduate who worked in the television broadcast and public relations industries. From the mid-1970s through the late 1980s, Wone was an activist in the Asian/Pacific/American women’s movement, as well as the Asian American movement more broadly. These movements, arising alongside other US civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s, were formed to address racial and sexual stereotypes and discrimination against Asian/Pacific/American communities. She held numerous memberships and positions in organizations committed to these movements, including a role as editor for “In Touch,” the newsletter of the New York City-based feminist collective, Asian Women United; public relations coordinator for the Coalition of Asian/Pacific/American Associations; member of the official delegation to the National Network of Asian and Pacific Women to the First National Asian/Pacific/American Women’s Conference for Educational Equity; and member of a fundraising committee for the New York Asian/Pacific/American Women’s Network.

The materials in this collection consist of organizational documents, internal notes, flyers, leaflets, publicity, and visual materials collected by Wone in the course of her activities in the Asian/Pacific/American women’s movement and the Asian American movement that reflect the breadth of her interest in these movements, as well as in feminism and civil rights more generally. The variety and volume of organizations and projects represented in this small collection also reflects the growth of ethnic political and cultural organizations that took place in the United States during the 1970s and 1980s.

To learn more about the contents of the Darlene Wone Papers, located at the NYU Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, view the collection’s finding aid.

Image: A series of magazines published for Asian Pacific American Heritage Week, 1981; Box 1; Darlene Wone Papers; TAM.643; Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives; New York University Libraries.