Overview

Anna May Wong remains one of Hollywood's best-known Chinese American actors. Between 1919 and 1960, Anna May Wong starred in over fifty movies, sharing billing with stars such as Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Ramon Novarro, and Warner Oland. Her life, though, is the prototypical story of an immigrant's difficult path through the prejudices of American culture. Born in Los Angeles in 1905, she was the second daughter of seven children born to a laundryman and his wife. Childhood experience fueled her fascination with Hollywood. By 1919 she secured a small part in her first film, The Red Lantern, and she continued to act up until her death. Her most famous film roles were in The Toll of the Sea, Peter Pan, The Thief of Baghdad, Old San Francisco, and Shanghai Express. But discrimination against Asiana, in both in the film industry and society, was commonplace, and when it came time to make a film version of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, she was passed over for the Chinese female lead role, which was ultimately given to the white actor Luise Rainer. In a narrative that recalls the pathos of life in Los Angeles's Chinese neighborhoods and the glamour of Hollywood's pleasure palaces, Graham Russell Gao Hodges recovers the life of a Hollywood legend.

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An important contribution to not only film studies but Asian American history and women's history. The facts of Wong's life--her humble origins as laundryman's daughter, her tragic love affairs, her international political activism, and her celebrity status as the nation's first Chinese American movie star--are far more compelling than any of her roles on film. -- Iris Chang, New York Times bestselling author Sweeps you into Anna May Wong's star-crossed life, with rich details of the passions and lost loves, conflicts and triumphs, brilliance and frustrations of this daring woman born far ahead of her time. Like a scene with the great diva, this book has nuance, complexity, and drama. -- Helen Zia, author of Last Boat out of Shanghai

An important contribution to not only film studies but Asian American history and women's history. The facts of Wong's life--her humble origins as laundryman's daughter, her tragic love affairs, her international political activism, and her celebrity status as the nation's first Chinese American movie star--are far more compelling than any of her roles on film. -- Iris Chang, New York Times bestselling author Sweeps you into Anna May Wong's star-crossed life, with rich details of the passions and lost loves, conflicts and triumphs, brilliance and frustrations of this daring woman born far ahead of her time. Like a scene with the great diva, this book has nuance, complexity, and drama. -- Helen Zia, author of Last Boat out of Shanghai

Author Information

Graham Russell Gao Hodges is the George Dorland Langdon Jr. Professor of History and Africana and Latin American Studies at Colgate University. He is the author of several books, including Taxi! A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver, Black New Jersey: 1664 to the Present Day, and David Ruggles: A Radical Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City. Emily Woo Zeller is an Earphones award-winning audiobook narrator. After beginning her voiceover career with Asian animation, she returned to the United States and began narrating a broad spectrum of audiobook genres. Her multilingual, multicultural framework brings a particularly unique, clear-eyed, and intimate perspective to the Asian American narratives she specializes in.

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