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.
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