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Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theater, radio, and American television. Born in Los Angeles, yet with her US citizenship scrutinized due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong—a defiant misfit—innovated nuanced performances to subvert the racism and sexism that beset her life and career. In this critical study of Wong's cross-media and transnational career, Yiman Wang marshals extraordinary archival research and a multifocal approach to illuminate a lifelong labor of performance. Viewing Wong as a performer and worker, not just a star, To Be an Actress adopts a feminist decolonial perspective to speculatively meet her as an interlocutor while inviting a reconsideration of racialized, gendered, and migratory labor as the bedrock of the entertainment industries.

About the Author

Yiman Wang is Professor of Film & Digital Media at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Remaking Chinese Cinema: Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Hollywood.

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Listen to the New Books Network interview with Yiman Wang

Reviews

"To Be an Actress offers a compelling reinterpretation of Anna May Wong. . . .Its expansive scope and intellectual depth invite readers to reflect on the labor of reading itself, making To Be an Actress an inspiring work that is as introspective as it is ambitious."
— Film Quarterly

"The definitive work regarding the contributions of Anna May Wong to cinema. Through gorgeous theory and astute historically situated analysis of acting as labor and performance, Yiman Wang gives us greater understanding of what prevented Anna May Wong from achieving her due. The recognition that her talent demands and deserves is finally given to her by this magnificent book."—Celine Parreñas Shimizu, author of The Movies of Racial Childhoods: Screening Self-Sovereignty in Asian/America

"Wang has written a remarkable book about Anna May Wong. Theoretically sophisticated and based on extensive and original archival research, To Be an Actress confronts the complexity of Wong's status as a Chinese American actress who was simultaneously excluded and idolized during her lifetime. While other studies of Wong's legacy focus on cosmopolitanism, costume and fashion, or receptions of racial stardom, the brilliance of this book is to shift attention to her actual work as an actress, whether as leading lady or ancillary performer, for insights into current debates about Orientalism and postcoloniality, citizenship, and precarious labor and agency."—Patrice Petro, Dick Wolf Director of the Carsey-Wolf Center and editor of Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s

"So much has been written about the famous and seemingly singular Anna May Wong, but no work has so rigorously, elegantly, and persuasively considered her screen presence, affective labor, and the longue durée of a career that spanned over half a century across changing media forms and cross-border entertainment industries. To Be an Actress will be a definitive and field-shaping work."—Denise Khor, author of Transpacific Convergences: Race, Migration and Japanese American Film Culture before World War II

"A rich, lively, and deeply researched study of a known yet enigmatic cinematic figure. Expanding on key methods in film studies, Wang artfully demonstrates how to write about a career, particularly one built within a racialized public sphere, without leaving behind the living person who animates it."—Terri Francis, author of Josephine Baker's Cinematic Prism