Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong's Rendezvous with American History

"Anna May Wong’s likeness appears on a U.S. silver quarter, yet today she is largely forgotten. Huang’s biography, though, is more than an act of reclamation. Daughter of the Dragon is the capstone in Huang’s ambitious trilogy—each an NBCC finalist —spotlighting Asian American cultural icons, starting with fictional Honolulu cop Charlie Chan, then the original Siamese twins, Chang and Eng Bunker. We admired Huang’s deftly drawn portrait of Wong. A beguiling and unique beauty, Wong rose to prominence in the swirl of anti-Asian hostility. In his deeply researched biography, Huang argues that Wong was seen as too Asian by some and too American by others, and that she overacted to explode stereotypes of Asian Americans. He explains the “delicate dance between stereotype and imagination, convention and subversion” that has made Anna May Wong “both revered and reviled.” “Between Madame Butterfly and the dragon lady, there lies the alluring art through which Anna May continues to haunt us all,” Huang writes."