Review by Booklist Review
With the recent, long overdue focus on Asian representation in Hollywood, the time is ripe to look back on an industry trailblazer. Following her many previous well-received sagas, Tsukiyama offers a riveting biographical novel about Anna May Wong (1905--61), a third-generation Chinese American whose prominent acting career spanned silent films, early television, and the stage. Wong's intimate voice, in this imagined account, rings so clear that readers may be tempted into believing they're reading an actual memoir. Growing up amid her parents' laundry business near Los Angeles' Chinatown, Anna skips school to visit nickelodeons and vows to appear on screen herself. She achieves remarkable success, always striving to give audiences authentic Chinese portrayals, though stymied by stereotypical parts, anti-miscegenation laws, and paternal pressure to abandon her "shameful" profession. For greater freedom, Anna travels to Europe, where she befriends Marlene Dietrich and Josephine Baker. With its rich supporting cast, the novel emphasizes the friendships and family relationships that help Anna thrive, while her many disappointments (like losing a leading role in The Good Earth to a German actress in "yellowface") catch at the heart. At times, the narrative breezes rather quickly through Anna's accomplishments, but overall, this stirring story about the drive and courageous spirit of a talented, barrier-breaking American icon works magnificently.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Tsukiyama (The Color of Air) delivers a comprehensive but lackluster fictionalized memoir of Anna May Wong, the first successful Chinese American film actor. Since Anna May's childhood in 1910s Los Angeles, she's dreamed of becoming a movie star. Her traditional father, who runs a laundry, is staunchly opposed, but her mother and older sister are quietly supportive. At 16, Anna May lands a breakout role in The Toll of the Seal, though pervasive racism and anti-miscegenation laws dog her career and mostly limit her to stereotyped bit parts. She's more readily accepted in Europe than China, where the Chinese press excoriates her with accusations that she's dishonoring her heritage. Still, after her father and younger siblings return to his ancestral Chinese village, she visits them in 1936. She faces more challenges in the 1950s, first with a serious medical diagnosis and then with fewer opportunities for roles, but her ambition persists. Tsukiyama nails the tone of an amateur memoirist struggling to get her story down, but it doesn't make for very dynamic fiction, and the rushed pacing doesn't help. Tsukiyama makes clear the miraculous nature of Wong's story but doesn't quite find the form to convey it. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary Agency. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Tsukiyama's (The Color of Air) fictionalization of the life of Anna May Wong (1905--61), a first-generation Chinese American who acted in films, theater, radio, and television, generally sticks to the true timeline and events of Wong's life. Wong grew up in Los Angeles, living behind her parents' laundry business. Her father didn't approve of her acting career, especially when she garnered negative reviews in Chinese newspapers because her characters were scantily clad or stereotypical. She longed to play characters who weren't concubines, prostitutes, or evil dragon ladies. As one of the first Chinese American actresses, she often struggled to get movie roles for two reasons: Hollywood protocols and anti-miscegenation laws prevented her from starring as a love interest to a white man, and Asian roles often went to white actors in yellowface. She was determined to take the roles she could get and never give up on acting. While Wong's life is fascinating, the author's use of the first-person perspective is not always successful. VERDICT Tsukiyama imagines Wong's conversations, letters and emotions, but at times the narrative feels detached, like a history book or Wikipedia page. The novel is most effective at showing what it took to be a star during the movie business's early years, especially for a Chinese American woman.--Leah Shepherd
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A pioneering Chinese American actress reflects on her life in Hollywood and the prejudice she faced throughout her career in this biofiction. As a child coming of age in early-20th-century Los Angeles, Anna May Wong longed to be an actress--and she made it happen. This would have been unimaginable if it weren't true, considering that Wong rose to fame in an era of the Chinese Exclusion Act, anti-miscegenation laws, and morality codes in the United States. As the book begins, Wong is traveling by train from California to New York in 1960, near the end of her life, and she's reading over three notebooks in which she's chronicled her stardom, dazzling social life, complicated family life, activism, and struggles with racism, misogyny, alcohol, and health. There's no doubt that the breadth of Wong's life is worthy of artistic treatment, and she's inspired many Asian American writers, including novelist Peter Ho Davies and poet Sally Wen Mao. The U.S. Mint released an Anna May Wong quarter in 2022. Tsukiyama presents Wong as a complex, savvy, iconoclastic artist caught between cultures as she surfs the tides of history. The novel demonstrates how Wong courageously weathered the industry's transition from silent films to talkies to the advent of television as well as her tumultuous times, from the Roaring '20s through the aftermath of World War II. She had fascinating friendships with the likes of Josephine Baker and Marlene Dietrich and experiences working across America, Europe, and Asia. But in offering so much painstaking, historically accurate detail, Tsukiyama sacrifices story. For readers familiar with Wong's biography, the book reads too much like an elevated Wikipedia entry. Swaths of the novel are repetitive, summarizing previous events as if they were weekly series recaps or emphasizing Wong's struggles as a third-generation Chinese American woman without imagining any more of her internal landscape. This sympathetic account of a silver-screen legend flies admirably between triumph and tragedy but struggles to soar. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
