Fay Chiang, whose quest to understand her identity as a child of Chinese immigrants found outlets in vivid poetry and in community activism that helped elevate Asian-American education and culture, died on Oct. 20 in a hospice in the Bronx. She was 65.

Her daughter Xian Chiang-Waren said the cause was complications of cancer. She had lived in Manhattan, in the East Village, until the cancer spread to her brain.

Ms. Chiang’s poetry — sometimes serene, sometimes angry and sometimes written in all lowercase letters — reflected her anxieties as a first-generation Chinese-American, her desire to etch Asian culture into American society, her involvement with organizations in Chinatown and on the Lower East Side, and her multiple reckonings with breast cancer over nearly a quarter-century.

She wrote about white friends and classmates who would not invite her into their homes because she was Chinese, the fourth-grade teacher who mocked her intention to write a poem, and the grandmother who admonished her for not being a boy. Her three volumes of poetry included “7 Continents 9 Lives” (2010).