Wendy M. Thompson
Author/Poet/Academic
Wendy M. Thompson is an Oakland born-and-raised poet. Her debut poetry collection Black California Gold (Bucknell University Press, 2025) maps out life in the Bay Area in the 1980s and 1990s, tracing the life paths of black Southern migrants and their descendants against a backdrop of urban redevelopment, advanced gentrification, and the erasure of black communities. She is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at San José State University. Her research and teaching interests include the Great Migration west to the California Bay Area, black mixed race identity, Asian immigrant mothering, race and the built environment, and our black natural world.