"China Dolls"

Lisa has just finished the 4th edit of her new novel China Dolls.  She likes the book a lot, which bodes well for all of us waiting to read it.  Her publication date would usually be May 2013, but the actual date is somewhat up in the air at this point.

John Espey

Of the three authors who collaborated as Monica Highland, Lisa and her mother Carolyn See are well known.  Less well known (unfortunately) is the third member of the trio, distinguished scholar and close family friend John Espey.

In 2001 Clara Sturak, Lisa's sister, published this beautiful tribute to a wonderful man.

http://magazine.ucla.edu/year2001/spring01_03.html

Fun with Monica

Early in Lisa's writing career, she teamed with her mother Carolyn See and close family friend John Espey to write three books under the pen name Monica Highland -- Lotus Land, 110 Shanghai Road, and Greetings from Southern California:  A Look at the Past through Postcards.  The three co-authors had a great deal of fun developing and poking fun at Monica's characteristics.

An example is Carolyn's enthusiastic praise of Monica on the back cover of the collection of postcards:

"No one combines joie de vivre, incisive intelligence, and a lust for popular culture quite as effectively as Monica Highland.  In her two previous novels, Lotus Land and 110 Shanghai Road, she has shown a keen eye for recent history, and now with this radiant collection of antique California postcards, she shines as never before."

I love the idea of an author writing reviews of herself.  When I was teaching the English novel, that was one literary genre I missed!

Anna May Wong for Young People

Recently I ran across Shining Star:  The Anna May Wong Story by Paula Yoo and Lin Wang.  This illustrated portrait of Anna May is an interesting one.  Although written for a young audience, Shining Star is effective in showing the negative responses she received as her film career developed -- first from her father and later from other Chinese men and women who resented the stereotypical roles she often had to play.

Yoo describes Anna May's success in European films and how it led to the biggest disappointment of her film career -- being passed over for Luise Rainer for the role of O-lan in The Good Earth.  The author downplays the disrespect she was shown when she went to China, emphasizing instead her acquisition of Chinese art and culture and her chance to repair relations with her father.

Yoo makes much of her turning to positive Chinese roles on her return to the U.S., beginning with The Daughter of Shanghai (1937) followed by films in the 1940s and transition to television in the 1950s.  After her death in February 1961, Yoo describes how she was put down by film critics only to have her career reinterpreted in a more sympathetic light in recent years.

Lin Wang's illustrations nicely complement Yoo's narrative, catching as they do some of Anna May's beauty and flapper elegance.

Of course, Anna May has had a deep impact on Lisa and her work, especially On Gold Mountain and Shanghai Girls.  But that's a topic for another day.