Margaret Chung was born on October 2, 1889, in Santa Barbara, California. Chung attended medical school at the University of Southern California, becoming the first American-born Chinese woman physician. She interned at the Mary Thompson Hospital in Chicago before eventually moving to San Francisco, where she founded a medical clinic in Chinatown. Chung was an advocate for women’s rights in both the United States and China. In Los Angeles, Chung served as the secretary of the Woman’s Auxiliary of the Chinese American League of Justice. She was also a member of the Chinese Protective Association and the Chinese Women’s Reform Club. 

Chung never married and there is some evidence that she engaged in erotically charged relationships with other women. In her early career, she adopted a masculine appearance that included slicked-back hair, black tailored suits, sailor hats, and a cane. Chung also participated in behaviors typically associated with men, such as drinking, gambling, and swearing. Among friends, she referred to herself as “Mike.” Her blatant defiance of gender norms in her dress and choice of profession cast suspicion on her private life. 

During World War Two, Chung was active in Red Cross work and lobbied Congress for the creation of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service) so that women could support the war effort by serving in the Naval Reserve. Chung became the informal adopted mother for the naval pilots who came to her for medical treatment. They called her Mom Chung and viewed her as a surrogate mother. Her decision to adopt a more feminine style of clothing in later life may have emanated from concerns about presenting an outward appearance of respectable heterosexuality or asexuality. Chung passed away on January 5, 1959. 

For more on Chung, see Wendy Rouse, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Suffrage Movement (New York: New York University Press, 2022); Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, “Was Mom Chung a ‘Sister Lesbian’? Asian American Gender Experimentation and Interracial Homoeroticism,” Journal of Women’s History 13, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 58–82. For an OutHistory exhibit that addresses Chung, see The Queer History of Women’s Suffrage: Scholarship and Censorship in 2025, by Wendy Rouse.