Daughter of the Dragon
Anna May Wong's Rendezvous with American History
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
One of the Atlantic's "Books to Get Lost in This Summer"
Best Books of August 2023: New York Times Book Review, Christian Science Monitor, InsideHook, BookRiot, WNET AllArts, Arlington Magazine
A trenchant reclamation of the Chinese American movie star, whose battles against cinematic exploitation and endemic racism are set against the currents of twentieth-century history.
Born into the steam and starch of a Chinese laundry, Anna May Wong (1905–1961) emerged from turn-of-the-century Los Angeles to become Old Hollywood’s most famous Chinese American actress, a screen siren who captivated global audiences and signed her publicity photos—with a touch of defiance—“Orientally yours.” Now, more than a century after her birth, Yunte Huang narrates Wong’s tragic life story, retracing her journey from Chinatown to silent-era Hollywood, and from Weimar Berlin to decadent, prewar Shanghai, and capturing American television in its infancy. As Huang shows, Wong’s rendezvous with history features a remarkable parade of characters, including a smitten Walter Benjamin and (an equally smitten) Marlene Dietrich. Challenging the parodically racist perceptions of Wong as a “Dragon Lady,” “Madame Butterfly,” or “China Doll,” Huang’s biography becomes a truly resonant work of history that reflects the raging anti-Chinese xenophobia, unabashed sexism, and ageism toward women that defined both Hollywood and America in Wong’s all-too-brief fifty-six years on earth.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Huang (Inseparable), an English professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, concludes his Rendezvous with America trilogy with a vital account of the life of Anna May (née Liu Tsong) Wong (1905–1961), the first Chinese American movie star, that masterfully chronicles her "spectacular rise from laundryman's daughter to global celebrity against the backdrop of a world riven by racism, bigotry, and injustice." Wong made her first onscreen appearance as an extra in The Red Lantern (1919) and three years later landed a breakthrough role as the Madame Butterfly–esque lead in The Toll of the Sea. Huang details how racism shaped Wong's career, noting that she was often "considered too Chinese to play a Chinese" and lost roles to white actors in yellowface who conformed to Asian stereotypes, most notably getting passed over for the lead role in The Good Earth (1937) in favor of white actor Luise Rainer. Additionally, anti-miscegenation prohibitions kept Wong from starring roles in romances because she wasn't allowed to kiss a white man onscreen. Huang's sympathetic treatment brings out the nuances of Wong's story, highlighting how she by turns acceded to and bristled against the stereotypes Hollywood asked her to play, a dynamic captured in Wong's sardonic practice of signing publicity photos "Orientally yours." It's a fascinating—and long overdue—close-up of a Hollywood trailblazer. Photos.
