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A review by hannahstohelit
Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong by Katie Gee Salisbury
slow-paced
3.0
I wanted to like this book a lot, and in some ways, the three stars are given more to Anna May Wong than they are to the book itself and the writing. At the same time, though, I don't really feel like I know much about her as a person after reading the book.
I was not impressed by the writing- neither by the style, which I found to alternate between overwrought and stilted prose and jarring over-casualness, nor by the "narrative nonfiction" pacing choices of the author. The nearly three pages of repetitive overdescription of Wong's mother's death in a car accident were frustrating, especially considering that the amount of text devoted to the entirety of WWII was only marginally longer... In general, I found the choice of what to emphasize, and occasionally the order of events, very confusing- I understand why the process of making The Good Earth was mentioned in the first place given Wong's being snubbed for the lead in favor of a non-Chinese actor, but why did the book go through the entire process of making and releasing the movie in such granular detail, while devoting significantly less time to describing the making of most of Wong's own movies (though some of those DO get an over-descriptive rendition of their plots)?
Overall, I just felt like the book did not do a good job in saying much about who Wong was as a person. The author described using a more "eastern" approach toward describing the ebbs and flows of Wong's life that doesn't talk of success or failure- which is a very fair thing to do as her career did have a number of unique eras in which she found her own ways to shine- but the way that this is done is essentially to use extravagant language to describe every decision she makes as the right one or every performance (short of the one West End play) as lauded or underappreciated, which isn't really helpful in terms of giving context to where she and her career fit in the greater constellation of Hollywood, or even the film worlds of Germany and the UK where she moved her career for various periods, or the actual ramifications of the decisions that she did make. And despite all the quotations from newspaper interviews, Wong remained to me a cipher as a person, with many of her quotes just seeming to be interview-circuit platitudes (a danger of the author relying largely/only on "primary sources") and what felt like a lot of telling, not showing, as far as Wong's mentalities when making certain choices (such as living with her father and siblings for much of her life). It also glosses over what seems to have possibly been a period of alcoholism in her later life- I genuinely can't tell because it's over in two paragraphs, which left me more confused than enlightened. (In general, the end of her life gets a real speed-run.)
The author makes clear in the introduction that this isn't a comprehensive biography and that others already exist, but doesn't list them- I wish she did, as I'd love to read one of them to gain more of an understanding of who Wong was as a person. Instead, the book seems to want to emphasize Wong's celebrity despite Hollywood racism- the depiction of this racism is definitely the strongest part of the book, which makes me wonder why the author didn't either explicitly narrow the focus to that element of her career and not attempt to explain other elements of herself and her life, or broaden the focus from her to other Asian performers in this regard. The mentions of people like James Wong Howe, Sessue Hayakawa, and Toshia Mori are brief yet tantalizing in the context of one of the theses of the book, which is that Asian actors were competing not just against white actors in yellowface but against each other for limited opportunities- something mentioned but with relatively few examples. The descriptions of this discrimination (and the circumstances which surrounded it) are much more effective than descriptions of other aspects of Wong's life- and this, plus the amount of time given to the description of the making of The Good Earth, makes me wonder whether a book more broadly about Asian performers and anti-Asian discrimination in early Hollywood would have suited the author's interest better.
I'm sure the author, though, wanted to focus on Wong, who she clearly admires and wants us to admire- but the most she did was make me intrigued about her, and make me want to learn more about her from other sources than this book. In fairness, I appreciate its doing that because I'm sure I have great learning in front of me.
I was not impressed by the writing- neither by the style, which I found to alternate between overwrought and stilted prose and jarring over-casualness, nor by the "narrative nonfiction" pacing choices of the author. The nearly three pages of repetitive overdescription of Wong's mother's death in a car accident were frustrating, especially considering that the amount of text devoted to the entirety of WWII was only marginally longer... In general, I found the choice of what to emphasize, and occasionally the order of events, very confusing- I understand why the process of making The Good Earth was mentioned in the first place given Wong's being snubbed for the lead in favor of a non-Chinese actor, but why did the book go through the entire process of making and releasing the movie in such granular detail, while devoting significantly less time to describing the making of most of Wong's own movies (though some of those DO get an over-descriptive rendition of their plots)?
Overall, I just felt like the book did not do a good job in saying much about who Wong was as a person. The author described using a more "eastern" approach toward describing the ebbs and flows of Wong's life that doesn't talk of success or failure- which is a very fair thing to do as her career did have a number of unique eras in which she found her own ways to shine- but the way that this is done is essentially to use extravagant language to describe every decision she makes as the right one or every performance (short of the one West End play) as lauded or underappreciated, which isn't really helpful in terms of giving context to where she and her career fit in the greater constellation of Hollywood, or even the film worlds of Germany and the UK where she moved her career for various periods, or the actual ramifications of the decisions that she did make. And despite all the quotations from newspaper interviews, Wong remained to me a cipher as a person, with many of her quotes just seeming to be interview-circuit platitudes (a danger of the author relying largely/only on "primary sources") and what felt like a lot of telling, not showing, as far as Wong's mentalities when making certain choices (such as living with her father and siblings for much of her life). It also glosses over what seems to have possibly been a period of alcoholism in her later life- I genuinely can't tell because it's over in two paragraphs, which left me more confused than enlightened. (In general, the end of her life gets a real speed-run.)
The author makes clear in the introduction that this isn't a comprehensive biography and that others already exist, but doesn't list them- I wish she did, as I'd love to read one of them to gain more of an understanding of who Wong was as a person. Instead, the book seems to want to emphasize Wong's celebrity despite Hollywood racism- the depiction of this racism is definitely the strongest part of the book, which makes me wonder why the author didn't either explicitly narrow the focus to that element of her career and not attempt to explain other elements of herself and her life, or broaden the focus from her to other Asian performers in this regard. The mentions of people like James Wong Howe, Sessue Hayakawa, and Toshia Mori are brief yet tantalizing in the context of one of the theses of the book, which is that Asian actors were competing not just against white actors in yellowface but against each other for limited opportunities- something mentioned but with relatively few examples. The descriptions of this discrimination (and the circumstances which surrounded it) are much more effective than descriptions of other aspects of Wong's life- and this, plus the amount of time given to the description of the making of The Good Earth, makes me wonder whether a book more broadly about Asian performers and anti-Asian discrimination in early Hollywood would have suited the author's interest better.
I'm sure the author, though, wanted to focus on Wong, who she clearly admires and wants us to admire- but the most she did was make me intrigued about her, and make me want to learn more about her from other sources than this book. In fairness, I appreciate its doing that because I'm sure I have great learning in front of me.