It’s only August, but I know Daughter of the Dragon is one of the best histories I have read this year. It ranks pretty near Number 1 right now. Huang delivers more than a life in this biography; Daughter of the Dragon is a portrait of Asian American history in all its glory and ugliness, it is a history of a community, an ethnic group, a skin color as it played out and was embodied by Anna May Wong.
Anna May Wong’s life is a microcosm of Asian American history, of American history.
Huang’s research is impeccable; each chapter is fully fleshed out with evidence from previous scholarship and archival sources. Letters to and from friends and family, press interviews, and a myriad of other Hollywood ephemera serve as Huang’s fodder. But Anna May’s own voice is rarely invoked; it would appear that few records in her own words exist, though Huang uses what artifacts she did leave behind. Putting the patchwork together as any good historian does, Huang captures and interprets her voice for us in his own; Anna May comes through the pages as if she were seated on the edge of desk, cigarette in hand.
The book follows a typical biographical chronology, from birth to death and everything in-between; however, Huang leans heavily toward Wong’s filmography as the measurement of her state of mind as well as a platform for a deeper discussion of legislation against Asian American citizenship and social standing in the American popular imagination. This is more than a biography, and while Daughter of the Dragon reads like a filmography: it is a vivid cultural history of Asian American film and representation in Hollywood. Indeed, Anna May Wong was a by-word for Asian American film for much of the twentieth century and her career. There can be no discussion of Asian representation in the media without her.
The result is a very satisfying history.
Dr JoAnn LoSavio 