Merle Woo
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Merle Woo (b. 1941) is a Korean-Chinese American socialist-feminist educator and writer. She was a member of the pioneering Asian American feminist performance group Unbound Feet.
For 20 years, Merle has been a leader in the San Francisco branches of Radical Women and the Freedom Socialist Party. During the ’80s, as an outspoken lesbian activist and socialist feminist, she won an unfair labor practice (represented by the American Federation of Teachers), an out-of-court settlement, and a union arbitration by AFT against the University of California for violation of her free speech rights and discrimination based on race, sex, sexuality and political ideology.
In the 1990s, Merle fought with lecturers and students to maintain student democracy, and a lesbian and community focus in Women Studies at San Francisco State University.
Merle received the humanitarian award from the Northern California Lesbian and Gay Historical Society in 1994. She is a member of the California Faculty Association and the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
For more information, see The Living Room Biographies, Beyond the Limits of Identity Politics (a tribute by her daughter Emily Woo Yamasaki), and GLAAD: Celebrating Role Models.
She has published a collection of poetry, Yellow Woman Speaks: Selected Poems, (Radical Women Publications). Her writings are included in Voices of Color, edited by Yolanda Alaniz and Nellie Wong (Red Letter Press), Three Asian American Writers Speak Out on Feminism, by Mitsuye Yamada, Merle Woo and Nellie Wong (Radical Women Publications), This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (Kitchen Table Women of Color Press), Tilting the Tower: Lesbians Teaching Queer Subjects by Linda Garber, and numerous other books and anthologies.
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