Asian actors like Anna May Wong helped build the U.S. film industry. Then Hollywood did a rewrite.
Asian Americans have been a part of Hollywood since its earliest days, making significant contributions despite formidable obstacles, but their names and artistry have been forgotten, overlooked or willfully erased. |
 | | Anna May Wong in 1930.Edward Steichen for Vanity Fair, via Condé Nast Archive |
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In 1994, when I was in fourth grade, the cultural touchstone of my year was the debut of "All-American Girl," the ABC sitcom starring Margaret Cho. It was the first prime-time television show focused on an Asian American family, and while some of the jokes flew over my head, it meant something to me to see an irreverent, fashionable young woman modeling a different way to be Asian American. I was crushed when the program was canceled after one season. |
Being part Chinese and growing up in a predominantly Asian suburb in Southern California, I was often surrounded by people who looked like me and shared similar backgrounds. But when it came to television and movies, Asians were nowhere to be found — or worse, they were portrayed, sometimes by white actors in yellowface, as bumbling foreigners who spoke in heavy accents like Mickey Rooney's Mr. Yunioshi in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or Long Duk Dong in "Sixteen Candles." But I knew we had more to offer than flattened stereotypes. So I kept looking. |
Then, as a newly minted college freshman, I stumbled upon a photograph of Anna May Wong, an Asian American actress who worked in motion pictures 75 years before Cho. And yet despite Wong's significance as the first Asian star born in the United States, I'd never read her name in any history book. Stunned by her beauty, wit and determination — Wong's career spanned four decades and she worked in nearly every dramatic medium, from silent films and talkies to radio, theater and television — I vowed to learn everything I could about her extraordinary life. |
What started as a girlhood obsession has since turned into a full-fledged biography of Anna May Wong, slated to come out next year. In the years I've spent researching and writing about her, I've realized that Wong was but one of many early Asian American pioneers in Hollywood whose legacies were similarly overlooked. This weekend, when you sit down to watch the Oscars, remember this: The record number of Asian nominees, including Michelle Yeoh and "Everything Everywhere All at Once," is not a fluke or an aberration. As I write in a guest essay, it's the actualization of an undertaking that began more than 100 years ago. |
| READ KATIE'S FULL ESSAY HERE | | |
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