Photo by Jmar Teran
Katie Gee Salisbury is the author of the new biography Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong. Salisbury also writes the newsletter Half-Caste Woman, and she lives in Brooklyn.
Q: What inspired you to write a biography of actress Anna May Wong (1905-1961)?
A: Growing up as a mixed race Asian kid in the suburbs of Los Angeles in the 1990s, I could count on one hand the Asian American role models I looked up to: Michelle Kwan, B. D. Wong, and Margaret Cho. As a community, Asian Americans were barely visible in mainstream media.
So when I stumbled upon a photograph of Anna May Wong during a college internship at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles, I was totally flabbergasted that someone like her had been a movie star in the 1920s and ‘30s. That was the most amazing thing to me, and yet no one was talking about her anymore.
Her historical importance seemed obvious to me, so it became kind of my personal mission to help revive Wong’s memory and shine a light on all that she accomplished in her career.
I also, selfishly, wanted to immerse myself in her world and live vicariously through her glamorous life. Writing an entire book on someone may seem like a roundabout way of doing that! But I truly enjoyed the years I spent excavating her life and researching the social and political context of her time.
Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: I came up with the title when I was working on the book proposal. It was a riff on I’m Not Your Negro, the title of Raoul Peck’s documentary on James Baldwin, which is also something Baldwin once said in an interview.
Most biographies are named after their subject, but I wanted to have a title that did more than state the obvious. I wanted it to capture people’s imaginations and provoke their curiosity. Alexis Coe’s biography of George Washington, You Never Forget Your First, does that and served as a model.
To me, Not Your China Doll is a way of turning the typical discourse about Asian women on its head, i.e., the idea that we are submissive, helpless, overtly feminine, objects of desire—China dolls.
Anna May Wong often had to play the China doll on-screen, although that changed over time as she took over the reins of her career and wielded more influence in the industry.
Telling people what you’re not is a way of asserting not only your identity, but also your agency as an individual. So the statement “not your China doll” is a defiant one that shifts power back into Wong’s hands.
I want people to realize she’s not a helpless Madame Butterfly in her own story, that she’s not a tragic figure as so many others have made her out to be.
Of course, I can’t take credit for the phrase itself because it’s been out there in the ether, living in our subconscious for a while now. I wasn’t surprised to see that during the pandemic in response to the rise in anti-Asian hate, “not your China doll” often appeared on posters and became a rallying cry of sorts for Asian American women.
Q: How did you research Anna May Wong's life, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?
A: To research the book, I tried to look at as many materials as possible, both in online databases and in-person archives.
That includes everything from newspaper clippings, movie magazines, interviews, personal correspondence, oral histories, film production files at the Academy library, memoirs and biographies of other Hollywood personalities, etc.
I also traveled to London to watch some of Wong’s rare European films at the British Film Institute. When there were people who knew Wong or relatives who were still alive, I conducted interviews to collect any recollections or stories that had been passed down.
Anna Wong, for example, Anna May Wong’s niece, was helpful in acting as a sounding board whenever I had questions or wanted to run something by her.
One thing that surprised me is that I ultimately came to different conclusions about incidents in Wong’s life that had been previously cited by other biographers.
This is partly due to how I interpreted the primary source material—you realize in the act of writing a biography that seemingly “objective” authors can come to dramatically different understandings of the same material.
In some cases, I was able to dig deeper, either as a result of insights I had or due to the fact that many more materials are digitized now and easily searchable.
For instance, on the question of whether Anna May Wong and Marlene Dietrich had a romantic affair, I found enough circumstantial evidence to disprove that theory.
And I was able to get in touch with Dietrich’s daughter, Maria Riva, who had been on set for Shanghai Express with her mother and Wong. Though Riva was well aware of her mother’s dabblings with men and women, she balked at the idea that she and Wong were anything more than friends.
Q: The author Phil Yu said of the book, “Katie Gee Salisbury’s vivid biography of the first Asian American movie star is not only a fun, transporting trip to a golden age, but also a contemporary consideration of why Anna May Wong still matters.” What do you think of that assessment, and how would you describe Wong's legacy today?
A: It was such an honor to receive those words of praise from Phil. I’ve admired his work over at Angry Asian Man for a long time. It was also validating to have him acknowledge how relevant Anna May Wong’s story is today.
It may seem like Asian American representation has seen a massive increase in the last few years since Crazy Rich Asians opened the floodgates, and it has, but that doesn’t mean we should stop questioning why it took us so long to get here.
Because those same forces that kept Wong from playing leading roles in Hollywood are still at play in the industry today.
That said, it has been incredible to watch Wong’s legacy be embraced by the public again over the last few years. She’s now on U.S. quarters, has a Barbie doll, and is the subject of an upcoming biopic.
People tell me my book is coming out at just the right time, which is funny, because when I started this project, almost no one I talked to knew who she was.
But I’m happy all the same to be a part of this wave of publicity that is finally giving Wong her due. Hopefully through my book people will also get to know who she really was.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m mulling over a few ideas for my next book, but nothing concrete yet. There are a couple Hollywood stories I’m interested in. I’d also like to write about mixed race identity at some point. So we’ll see where things lead.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: If people are interested in learning more about Anna May Wong (outside of reading the book), I write a free Substack called Half-Caste Woman. I also post glamor shots of Wong and updates about the book to @annamaywongbook.
And I’ve got a bunch of events coming up in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, including a book talk with Ed Park at The Strand on March 14. For more details, visit: https://www.notyourchinadoll.com/events
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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