Repost from Ann's site:
Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong
Anna May Wong started out in silent films and was the first Asian-American film star. There have been several books written about her and hopefully many more will follow.
Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong is a new book about her and the author is Katie Gee Salsbury.
And I'm glad for another book.
But, yes, I do wish it was a better book. Or even a good one.
Reality isn't good enough for Katie Gee. She needs to create 'truths' that didn't exist. She invents motive and meaning and applies it to Anna and others. Anna's life was honestly rich enough and interesting enough that we didn't need a 'creative' biographer. Worse, it reads like a Young Adult novel. That's especially embarrassing since she's at least 39 years old. (I've looked all over for a date of birth and have had no luck. I called C.I. and she said Katie Gee was either 39 or 40.)
In media, she repeatedly portrays herself as identifying with Anna May because she (the author) is fifth-generation Chinese. She carries that over to her own website where she also adds "Anglo-Irish" which, for the record, Anna May was not.
The book plods along with descriptions of a life that no one seems to have observed or told to Katie Gee. But it's those moments -- those long drawn out moments of creative fiction -- that she wants us to believe and be impressed by?
Her research is shoddy. She doesn't read Chinese, for example, and she has details about a trip to Hong Kong that Anna May made (she actually made two trips). They come from an article in Chinese. She used "aids" to translate it. I'm going to assume she means things like Google translate. It's a controversial article -- supposedly, Anna Mae Wong -- intentionally or not -- insulted members of the Hong Kong film community by ignoring them when they came to greet her. Seems like if you can't read the language and you're using for a book you're writing -- a book you're getting paid to write -- you spend some money getting a professional translation made.
But she doesn't spend much time on anything -- including basic research.
Maggie Q. Where is she in the book?
From Ava and C.I.'s 2013 piece "TV: Nikita's greatest foe:"
In the US versions, Nikita's been blonde. In all three previous
versions, Nikita's been White. Maggie Q is bi-racial. With a White
father and a Vietnamese mother, she's Asian-American. And carrying her
own show.
August 27, 1951, The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong aired its first
episode. That DuMont Network program featured Asian-American actress
and star Anna May Wong. Wong had found fame in silent films, then moved
on to talkies before pursuing the stage and overseas films. At the age
of 46, she began starring in The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong which was
the first TV series in the US to star an Asian-American woman. And her
character? A spy.
Much is rightly made of African-American Kerry Washington being the star of ABC's one hour drama Scandal. Similar attention should focus on Maggie Q's accomplishment.
Q's carried the series for three years. She's played a vengeful and
untrusting Nikita who wanted to bring down Division who managed to
transform into a team leader in the second season and to someone with an
ever increasing sense of right and wrong in the third season. She's
handled each evolution with skill and careful shading, forever finding
new dimensions in Nikita -- the trained assassin who fights her way back
to humanity.
Winding down her overly long book, Katie Gee writes:
Her
legacy and spirit live on, too, in actors like Cho, Michelle Yeoh, Lucy
Liu, BD Wong, Sandra Oh, Awkwafina, Mindy Kaling, Steven Yeun, Kal
Penn, Gemma Chan, John Cho, Constance Wu, Simu Liu, Ke Huuy Quan, Ali
Wong, Ming-Na Wen, Tzi Ma, James Hong, and so many more.
So many more?
None of those people carried their own American TV show except Cho -- Margaret Cho, the one season sitcom embarrassment that was All American Girl (Margaret has called it an embarrassment herself and spoken and written of the racism and fat shaming she endured). Maggie Q? She had her own show. It ran for four seasons and 74 episodes. Where's Maggie Q?
Maybe that Anglo-Irish is keeping Katie Gee from absorbing actual Asian-American information?
No, idea but Maggie Q earned at least a mention in a sentence.
(Before anyone e-mails, Lucy Liu co-starred on Elementary. She did not star. The only other star would be Tia Carrere who starred in three seasons of the syndicated series Relic Hunter.)
It's a really bad book. Hopefully, some good ones will follow but at least Anna May Wong was remembered if not actually honored.
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
