Katie Gee Salisbury was a 19-year-old intern at Los Angeles’ Chinese American Museum when she first heard of film star and TV actress Anna May Wong.
“I was totally taken aback that there could have been an Asian American movie star in the 1920s and ‘30s and that I also had never heard of her,” Salisbury recalls on a video call from Brooklyn, where she is now based. “I’m half Chinese. I grew up in an Asian American community in Arcadia and I was like, if she was that famous, how come no one is talking about her?”
SEE ALSO: Get the free Book Pages newsletter about bestsellers, books, authors and more
Changing the narrative
Salisbury began what would become years of research into the star’s life and work. The culmination of that labor is “Not Your China Doll,” her biography of Anna May Wong, which has just been published by Dutton.
“When you look up Anna May Wong’s life, there’s a shorter narrative, a very pat narrative that gets told about her career,” Salisbury explains. “That she became very famous, was very beautiful, had roles in some of these huge blockbusters, like ‘The Thief of Bagdad’ in 1924, but Hollywood wouldn’t put her in leading roles because of her race.”
She adds that the story often ends with Wong losing the lead role in “The Good Earth” to German American actress Luise Rainer. But Salisbury thought that there had to be more to it.
Read the full article here
