Author Katie Gee Salisbury will give a talk about her Anna May Wong biography Not Your China Doll (2024), which has been named a PW Weekly Top 10 Memoirs & Biographies for Spring 2024 and Entertainment Weekly “Books We Are Excited to Read in 2024.”
Katie Gee Salisbury is the author of Not Your China Doll, a new biography of Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Believer, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in 2021 and gave the TED Talk “As American as Chop Suey.” She also writes the newsletter Half-Caste Woman. A fifth-generation Chinese American who hails from Southern California, she now lives in Brooklyn.
Mila Zuo is Associate Professor in Cinema and Media Studies at UBC. Her book Vulgar Beauty: Acting Chinese in the Global Sensorium (Duke UP, 2022) received the best book award in media, performance, and visual studies from the Association for Asian American Studies. Other articles can be found in Celebrity Studies, Women & Performance, Post 45, and Journal of Chinese Cinemas. In addition to her scholarly work, Zuo is also a filmmaker whose award-winning works have screened in numerous international film festivals, universities, and galleries.
A Q&A, moderated by Mila Zuo (Film), will follow. Books will be available for purchase at the event.
Book Summary:
Set against the glittering backdrop of Los Angeles during the gin-soaked Jazz Age and the rise of Hollywood, this debut book celebrates Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star, to bring an unsung heroine to light and reclaim her place in cinema history.
Before Constance Wu, Sandra Oh, Awkwafina, or Lucy Liu, there was Anna May Wong. In her time, she was a legendary beauty, witty conversationalist, and fashion icon. Plucked from her family’s laundry business in Los Angeles, Anna May Wong rose to stardom in Douglas Fairbanks’s blockbuster The Thief of Bagdad. Fans and the press clamored to see more of this unlikely actress, but when Hollywood repeatedly cast her in stereotypical roles, she headed abroad in protest.
Anna May starred in acclaimed films in Berlin, Paris, and London. She dazzled royalty and heads of state across several nations, leaving trails of suitors in her wake. She returned to challenge Hollywood at its own game by speaking out about the industry’s blatant racism. She used her new stature to move away from her typecasting as the China doll or dragon lady, and worked to reshape Asian American representation in film.
Filled with stories of capricious directors and admiring costars, glamorous parties and far-flung love affairs, Not Your China Doll showcases the vibrant, radical life of a groundbreaking artist.
*Book summary from https://www.notyourchinadoll.com/.
How to Attend:
This event will be held on October 3 from 2:30 – 4:00pm in Buchanan Tower 323. Attendees must register ahead of time.
For those unable to make it, please note that this session will be recorded and posted online at a later date.
This event is co-sponsored by the UBC Centre for European Studies, Department of History, Public Humanities Hub, Department of Central, Eastern, & Northern European Studies, Department of Asian Studies, UBC Film Society, Centre for Cinema Studies, and the Winnifred Eaton Archive.
