To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World

by Yiman Wang

Overview

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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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520346321
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	06/25/2024
Series:	Feminist Media Histories , #7
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	284
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

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.