Yunte Huang, a Guggenheim Fellow, has taught at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a Distinguished Professor of English. The author of the Edgar Award–winning biography Charlie Chan and Inseparable, both NBCC finalists, Huang speaks frequently about American popular culture.
"[A]n incisive guide to the tangle of race, politics, and business
that Anna May Wong encountered during her rise to fame... Daughter
of the Dragon offers a lively tour through Wong's world and
filmography, and the film stills and portraits included throughout
are a particular pleasure. Mr. Huang turns the spotlight back onto
an important but largely forgotten film icon—one who shone brightly
despite the bitter racial bias she faced throughout her long
career. "
*Julia Flynn Siler - The Wall Street Journal*
"With Daughter of the Dragon, Huang is offering something
different... a form of reclamation and subversion. Huang is a wry
and generous storyteller; the Anna May he evokes stepped out from
the limited roles she was relegated to and turned to writing as a
way of showcasing her curiosity and wit."
*Jennifer Szalai - The New York Times*
"Yunte Huang's superb biography of Hollywood's first Chinese
American movie star, Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong's
Rendezvous with American History, doubles as a reckoning with the
country's attitudes about Asian people in Wong's day...
tremendously elucidating and moving."
*Nell Beram - Shelf Awareness*
"Daughter of the Dragon gives us a sense of how difficult it was
for Wong to operate amid the legal, cultural, political and social
constraints that restricted the roles she could play in the movies
and the choices she could make in her life. Yet Huang also lets us
watch Anna May transcend those limits, sending witty letters to
friends, welcoming reporters, posing for photographers and
campaigning for war in relief in China, all the while creating the
character that still demands our attention. "
*Ann Fabian - National Book Review*
"Daughter of the Dragon soars when Huang resists treating Wong
as a hapless victim of American history and digs deeper to reveal
the shrewd, resilient soul beneath. During her lifetime, Wong's
stardom was, for reasons beyond her control, eclipsed by that of
her white peers. Thanks in part to scholars like Huang, her legacy
won't suffer the same fate. "
*Mayukh Sen - The New Yorker*
"Illustrated throughout with wonderfully evocative photographs and
combining cinema history with social commentary, [Huang's] study
offers a moving portrait of a screen siren who is 'far more
complicated than her legendary celluloid image would suggest."
*PD Smith - The Guardian*
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