Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong

Anna May Wong is one of those performers that leaves me saying, how are there not a million biographies written about her? Yes, she’s had her fair share, but she isn’t in the realm of Audrey Hepburn or Marilyn Monroe where books about her are everywhere. It’s a shame because, as Katie Gee Salisbury lays out in her book Not Your China Doll, Anna May Wong lived a life of excitement and heartache, in equal measure.

I went into this book knowing little about Anna May Wong other than her career was waylaid by the racism that, in some ways, still plagues Hollywood. Salisbury’s book positions Wong as a woman who inhabits many worlds. She’s a woman. She’s Asian. She’s Asian-American. And she came of age during the glittering, “Bright Young Things” era of the 1920s. Young Anna May wanted to meet in the movies from a young age, having a front row seat to the early filmmaking taking place in Los Angeles. It was almost kismet that she eventually broke into the movies. She starred in powerful features like 1922’s The Toll of the Sea before being discovered by Douglas Fairbanks and placed in the adventure film, The Thief of Bagdad (1924).

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Salisbury balances Wong’s life with that of the changing landscape of America for Asian-Americans. She devotes significant time to Wong’s father, owner of a prominent Chinese laundry, as well as the flowering Chinatown of that era. She also devotes significant time to Anna May’s own trip to China. Here is where the two halves of Anna May Wong converge. The actress, despite her grand success, was nervous about how Chinese citizens would feel about her and it was rough going. Reviews from Chinese newspapers at the time criticized Wong for being too glamorous and not Chinese enough.

Not being enough of one thing or another plagued Wong her entire career, as the book lays out. Much has been said about Wong losing out on the role of O-Lan in the 1937 adaptation of The Good Earth, but what’s unique with Not Your China Doll is how Salisbury couches that as just one of many elements in Wong’s life where her being Asian was used against her, paralleling it alongside her trip to China wherein Wong was judged for letting her American qualities overwhelm her Asian heritage.

For me, I knew a lot about Wong’s films, the roles she didn’t get, and how Hollywood’s racism derailed a promising career. (And, make no mistake, Salisbury includes many contemporary accounts wherein critics were asking why the studios weren’t using Wong, particularly in roles involving Asian characters.) But Salisbury spend an equally significant time looking at Wong’s personal life. She discusses Wong’s expansive family and her numerous siblings. Wong lost both her mother, in a tragic accident, and sister to suicide. Wong also engaged in a few love affairs, although she tended to date men who were unavailable in various capacities.

Not Your China Doll is a must-read for Anna May Wong fans as well as those who know nothing about her. Katie Gee Salisbury’s work is comprehensive and positions Wong alongside both her Hollywood life as well as the changing landscape of American for Asian people.