Author Katie Gee Salisbury will be discussing her critically acclaimed work, Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong. Wong was a trailblazer, becoming the first Asian American movie star in Hollywood, as well as a style icon and activist. Katie Gee Salisbury has spoken and written about Anna May Wong on MSNBC, in the New York Times, and in Vanity Fair.
The actress Anna May Wong’s image can be found on an American quarter, and Mattel recently debuted a Barbie inspired by her. Contemporary actresses have paid tribute to her, but until recently, Wong’s place in cinema history had been lost to time.
Anna May Wong was born in 1905, when Los Angeles was more of a country town than a sprawling city. As a child, she spent most of her days at the Chinese Mission School or helping in her dad’s laundry, until she discovered movies in Chinatown. Every spare nickel or dime she earned delivering laundry went towards going to the theatres on Main Street, after which she’d run home to reenact what she had just watched. At the age of eighteen, Wong got her first big break when she was cast in Douglas Fairbanks’s blockbuster The Thief of Bagdad. She befriended Marlene Dietrich while making films in Berlin, and the two actresses later co-starred in the Oscar winning film Shanghai Express. She was adored by press and clamoring fans, as a flapper and a fashion icon who dazzled royalty and left trails of suitors in her wake. At the time of her untimely death in 1961, just weeks before she was slated to appear in the historic Flower Drum Song, the first big budget Hollywood film with an Asian American cast, she had more than seventy credits across film, television, and theatre.
Set against the glittering backdrop of Los Angeles in the Jazz Age, NOT YOUR CHINA DOLL is perfect for those who love stories about old Hollywood and for readers of Asian American culture and history. Filled with stories of glamorous parties, capricious directors, and admiring costars, this is a wonderful showcase of a groundbreaking artist whose life continues to inspire others today.
Katie Gee Salisbury has spoken and written about Anna May Wong on MSNBC, in the New York Times, and in Vanity Fair. She also writes the newsletter "Half-Caste Woman." She was a 2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship finalist and gave the TED Talk “As American as Chop Suey.” A fifth-generation Chinese American from Southern California, she now lives in Brooklyn. Not Your China Doll is her first book.