To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media WorldA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. 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. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 22 | |
Spotlighting Anna May Wong in Theater | 63 |
Labor in the Margins | 97 |
The Show Must Go Onin Episodes Now You See Her Now You Dont | 135 |
Meeting Anna May Wongs Greetings | 166 |
The Second Beginning in the Wong Time Interstiracial | 187 |
Notes | 203 |
Other editions - View all
To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World Yiman Wang Limited preview - 2024 |
Common terms and phrases
actors actress agency amah anachronotopic Anna May Wong Archive Asian American audience Australia authorship background Barbara Stanwyck Show British camera career chapter character Cheng China China trip Chinese American Chinese Digest Chinese name Cinema close-up color costume critical dance Daughter of Shanghai death act device or visit diegetic dis)play dress episode ethnic exotic female femininity film film's footage frame gaze gender-race glamour glamour photography gown heteronormative Hollywood Hui Fei intersti-racial Kwan labor Lady from Chungking life-career maid Margaret Herrick Library margins movie narrative Native Land Oriental Orientalist parergon Peking Opera performer-worker photographer Picture play position pressbook produced publicity qipao QR code racial rebeginnings reenactment role scan the QR scene screen script Shanghai Express Shosho shot Song stage Star stereotypes Taishanese television theater tour translation Turandot University Press vaudeville Vechten viewers visit DOI visual watch this video Wong to Marinoff Wong's yellowface York