Seen by many as the first Chinese American star in Hollywood, the highs and lows of a life battling for space in the limelight are explored in a detailed new book
Widely considered the first Chinese American Hollywood star, Anna May Wong has only recently begun to get her due after a long period of neglect following her death in 1961. In 2020 Google celebrated her breakthrough role in the 1922 film The Toll of the Sea with a Doodle, and that same year she was featured as a recurring character in Ryan Murphy’s Netflix drama series, Hollywood. In 2022, the US Mint announced her inclusion on quarters – one of the first women to ever receive such an honor – and in 2023 Mattel released a Barbie doll celebrating her. A biopic of the actor is currently in the works.
In the meantime, those curious to know the ins and outs of Wong’s life can enjoy Katie Gee Salisbury’s fast-paced, thoroughly researched biography, Not Your China Doll. Salisbury, who has written and spoken widely on the Chinese-American experience and who grew up not far from Wong’s stomping grounds in southern California, is the ideal author to guide us through the actor’s life. She effectively leverages her personal experience with systemic injustice, as well as her wide-ranging knowledge of Hollywood and cinema, to give Wong the biography that she has long deserved but unfortunately has not yet received.
