Anna May Wong’s Legacy Is Coming Full Circle a Century Later

The first Asian American woman to star in Hollywood, she fought back against typecasting

Katie Gee Salisbury
Published in
8 min readMay 6, 2021

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Poster for the Fu Manchu flick Daughter of the Dragon (1931).

Something Mel Guo, my research assistant, said a few newsletters ago has been replaying in my head. She wrote that discovering Anna May Wong was a kind of revelation that made her want to honor AMW’s “unfulfilled…

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Katie Gee Salisbury
#StopAsianHate

Author of NOT YOUR CHINA DOLL, a new biography of Anna May Wong, forthcoming from Dutton on March 12, 2024. Available for pre-order: www.notyourchinadoll.com