A Life in Stories
William Wong Foey Shares Red Bluff Stories…
For William Wong Foey, most days start with a seven-mile walk around his hometown of Red Bluff. “I don’t feel 75,” he says. “I feel pretty good.” The movement is part of a three-part daily routine. “I write every day and I paint every day. Being an artist and a writer, I’m never bored.”
Foey is a descendent of one of Red Bluff’s oldest Chinese families and has become a teller of its stories, with 10 books in publication and three more in production. While he says he’s always been an artist, he didn’t start writing until his 40s, when he realized the stories he’d been holding in needed an outlet. “I just kept remembering all these things my family told me about,” he says. “There were all these interesting things.”
With no prior training as a writer, he put together the true story of his father’s first wife dying at 19 because a white doctor refused to attend to a Chinese woman. “I still get choked up when I think of it,” says Foey. The story was so compelling that it won first place in a short story competition.
“There were things that needed to be said,” he adds. “A lot of it concerns my culture and things that happened in China and my family in Red Bluff.” While most stories become fictionalized accounts of stories he knows, he always researches his stories extensively.
Foey’s most recent book, “House of Wong,” spans 50 years of an interracial family moving from the Boxer Rebellion of the 1900s to the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s through the Communist takeover of China in the late 1940s. “It’s a message of family unity,” he says. “There are different personalities and political ideas but they stay together as a family through thick and thin. They always stick up for each other.”
Just as “House of Wong” is finding its first audiences, Foey is putting the finishing touches on “Water God,” which takes place in Marysville during the annual Bok Kai Festival, “the only celebration of its kind held outside of China.” According to local Chinese lore, the city of Marysville was saved from the great flood of 1955, so devastating to sister community Yuba City, because the water god is honored each year in this festival. He anticipates a release of Water God this summer.
A hallmark of Foey’s books is that they come with his own cover illustrations. His publisher offered the services of an artist to create the covers, noting that they could read the books and be inspired, but he says, “Who would understand the message of the book better than
the author?”
Foey’s writing process harkens back to days of yore. Rather than settle in with a laptop, he pulls a chair up to an old-fashioned typewriter and begins punching keys, letting his imagination take him where it wants to go, without notes. “I just write what comes into my mind,” he says, noting a time when he wrote for three straight hours without realizing the time he was taking. If he hasn’t painted on that day, he’ll switch over to his canvas when the writing wanes. Other days he’ll start with painting and move into writing after. Usually, that seven-mile walk will have already taken place.
Occasionally, his routine is changed by substitute teaching gigs at Red Bluff schools. Foey holds a bachelor’s degree and teaching credential in art and says, “I enjoy interacting with young people. Occasionally I share my experiences of Chinese culture in Northern California.” Foey has made several lectures around Northern California in libraries, bookstores and college campuses. “It’s important that people understand the diversity of what made America what it is,” he adds, “different cultures from around the world.”
“People tend to be afraid of cultures they don’t understand,” he says. This is one reason the Foey family has partnered with the Chew family, another longstanding Red Bluff family of Chinese heritage, to share the joys of Chinese New Year celebrations in the North State. The families bring traditional dragon dancers in and share the music and dances, as well as other Chinese traditions, of this important holiday.
“Deep down, we’re all the same,” says Foey. “We all hurt, feel pain, we all feel the desire for love. Our customs are different.” And while he cherishes the customs of his Chinese heritage, he’s also keen on life in Northern California. “I still enjoy going into the mountains, going fishing,” he says. “I just like the small-town type of environment.”
Gratefully, the small-town environment is conducive to his artistic productivity. “I have a whole line of stories I want to write,” says Foey. “Hopefully I will live long enough to write them all. As long as I still have a breath in me, I will keep writing.” •
