Ebook Download Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend
Knowing is a process that will be undertaken by all individuals in every age. In this instance, we have always guides that ought to be accumulated and also check out. Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter To Hollywood Legend is just one of guides that we constantly suggest for you in finding out. This is the means how you find out pertaining to the subject. When you have the visibility of guides, you have to see just how this publication is actually advised.
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend
Ebook Download Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter To Hollywood Legend. Modification your behavior to hang or squander the moment to only chat with your good friends. It is done by your everyday, do not you feel burnt out? Now, we will certainly show you the brand-new practice that, in fact it's a very old behavior to do that could make your life more qualified. When really feeling burnt out of consistently chatting with your close friends all downtime, you can find the book qualify Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter To Hollywood Legend then read it.
Spending the moment for reviewing a book will offer you the extremely valuable system. The system is not just regarding getting the understanding to connect to your specific condition. Yet, sometimes you well require fun point from guide. It could accompany you to run the moment meaningfully and also well. Yeah, great time to read a publication, good time to have fun. And also the presence of this book will be so precise to be in your own.
Schedule, will not constantly relates to just what you need to get. Bok could likewise be in some numerous genres. Religious beliefs, Sciences, socials, sports, politics, legislation, as well as many book designs become the sources that occasionally you need to read all. Nonetheless, when you have had the reading behavior and find out more books as Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter To Hollywood Legend, you could feel much better. Why? Due to the fact that, your possibility to review is not only for the need because time but also for constant activities to always enhance and also boost your brighter future and life high quality.
Related to this condition, you will certainly likewise figure out May books that can be sources for your life. It is not only this type of topic; you might also discover others like this publication to offer. Certainly, exactly what we offer is what best in this world. So, you may not be fretted to select Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter To Hollywood Legend as one of motivating reading book. Now, no matter what to do, you need to get this book and also get adhering to the system to be a lot easier and quicker.
Review
“An illuminating, authoritative biography of Anna May Wong―one of the most enigmatic icons in Hollywood and in the history of Chinese America.†― Yunte Huang, author of Charlie Chan The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with Ameri“Through a scrupulous examination of Anna May Wong’s life and work, Graham Russell Gao Hodges, a leading African American historian, deploys his keen understanding of American racial matters to transform Wong from merely a tragic figure to a real human be“Graham Russell Gao Hodges’ fascinating biography of Anna May Wong is an important contribution to not only film studies but Asian American history and women’s history. The facts of Wong’s life―her humble origins as laundryman’s daughter, her tragic love “Graham Hodges has woven a spellbinding tale that sweeps you into Anna May Wong’s star-crossed life, with rich details of the passions and lost loves, conflicts and triumphs, brilliance and frustrations of this daring woman born far ahead of her time. Lik“Hodges’ biography proves a valuable resource for further studies of Anna May Wong’s self-conscious manifestations of a fluid, hybrid identity at the intersections between performance/performativity, gender/sexuality and race/ethnicity.†― Miglena Ivanova
Read more
About the Author
Graham Russell Gao Hodges is the George Dorland Langdon, Jr. Professor of History and Africana Studies at Colgate University.
Read more
Product details
Paperback: 316 pages
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press (June 1, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9888139630
ISBN-13: 978-9888139637
Product Dimensions:
6 x 0.7 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
3.8 out of 5 stars
19 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#247,349 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Anna May Wong was known as something of a sex symbol in her day, but she was also a very talented actress. From her first starring role in Toll of the Sea she had an ability to touch you from the screen. Unfortunately, she was constantly put in bad vehicles and is virtually unknown today.While I was glad to find an affordable biography on Wong, I soon found that I got what I paid for. This book gives alot of facts about Wong, so many in such a hurried fashion that one gets bleary eyed reading them. The writing is terribly uneven and vague. Case in point, something happened to incur the wrath of the Chinese people against Wong when she arrived for her only trip to China. However, the author only says she was "uncharacteristically rude to her fans." So...what'd she do that was so bad they threatened her family if they allowed her to stay in China? He doesn't give us the details. I suppose it could be possible that his source was just as vague, but he could at least have let his readers know the facts were not available, especially when he went to such great detail later in the chaper describing the hatred Wong experienced at the hands of her countrymen due to the mysterious event.Then at the end of the book Hodges describes one of Wong's last appearances on television with the fact that there was a problem with her lower lip "from her near fatal stroke two years before." The TV show in question was taped in 1960. For whatever reason, this is the first time the author mentions the stroke(I went back over the previous pages to see if, in my boredom, I had skipped over it; the last illness mentioned was a two day hospitalization she had sometime in 1955 or '56. I'm sure if this was the "near fatal stroke" she would have been hospitalized for more than two days). Hodges is so busy describing her TV appearances he "forgets" to tell us about the stroke!Also disappointing is the lack of photos of Wong from later in her life.The author seems at times to be protecting Wong's reputation by omitting facts and downplaying her drinking problem so that the reader doesn't come away with a bad feeling about the actress. His subject has been dead for more than 40 years and I'm sure that the knowledge that she may have been "rude" from time to time will not deter people who enjoy her work from buying the Picadilly DVD coming out in February, or seeing any of her rare films should they become available. The man is a history professor, for goodness sakes! It is rather juvenile on his part to write a "puff piece" instead of reporting the facts. This leads me to wonder if Hodges was really the author or did one of his students pen the book for extra credit?
The author did probably his best. He writes well, and his fascination with Anna May Wong is seen through the book. However, and he admitted this drawback in the preface, he had only limited access to personal and family papers of Anna May Wong (due to some problems withing the Wong family). And this is the unfortunate point, and that is why I rated the book with only three stars. I believe that with more information the picture of A.M.Wong would be more precise, and colourfull as well.
A wonderful look at the life and career of this sadly overlooked legend.
The life of a movie star that is mostly forgotten now.
Gao Hodges' research into Anna May Wong seems pretty thorough to me! Though he failed to speak to the surviving brother, Richard, Hodges still is able to paint a fairly full picture of Wong's private life. The various misspellings are a shame ("Delores" Del Rio for example) but aren't egregious. As other reviewers have noted, where Hodges shines is in his ability to "crack the code," to convey to us what Anna May Wong was trying to sneak onto the screen when the pedestrian Hollywood scenarios she has stuck with failed her sense of her art--her gestures, her costumes, her allusions to realms of Chinese history and folklore she made her own, and which we might never have known about if we were not ourselves Chinese American--which I'm not. So good for him! And congratulations to the British Film Institute for its superb restoration of Dupont's "Piccadilly" which was recently shown here in SF to accompany the recent groundswell of interest in Wong's career.
In a mysterious convergence of coincidence and good fortune reminiscent of that week in 1975 when then-immerging rocker, Bruce Springsteen, landed on the covers of both TIME and NEWSWEEK, we've witnessed the publication of three monographs on Anna May Wong in a one-year span. Let it be known that, heretofore, there have been no Anna May Wong books, no Anna May Wong "industry" (as there is for, say, Marilyn Monroe or dozens of other dead celebs), and that the unfortunate actress had been lucky to get a capsule bio or passing reference in most mainstream film histories.Thus, after years of neglect, a full-length biography of Ana May Wong (1905-1961), the first Chinese American star, whose career spanned the silent era, the talkies, stage, radio and television, is cause for celebration.I should alter that to cause for "qualified celebration," for Graham Russell Gao Hodges' always well-meaning but sometimes flawed ANNA MAY WONG: FROM LAUNDRYMAN'S DAUGHTER TO HOLLYWOOD LEGEND, is not the definitive bio her fans have longed for.It is good on a whole, even excellent in some respects, but there are technical inconsistencies at hand and dubious interpretations proffered that prevent it from being a totally reliable, much less authoritative statement on its subject.Furthermore, at the risk of appearing a crank, I'll say that I've encountered few books put out by a major publisher (Paragon Macmillan is an imprint of St Martin's Press) so fraught with repetitions, typos, imprecise language, faulty syntax and poorly constructed writing. At times, the reader feels compelled to cry out, "Is there an editor in the (publishing) house?"In a chapter devoted to Wong's early career, for instance, Hodges dutifully describes Wong's involvement in several silent films from Cinema's Black & White past, when, suddenly, he starts to describe the colors of her costumes in yet another. What, you may well ask, true-to-life colors in a silent movie? It is not until the sixth paragraph devoted to the film in question that the author reveals that THE TOLL OF THE SEA (1922) just happened to be the first Technicolor feature.(There are other such lapses, but since they've been noted elsewhere, I shan't repeat them here.)Though penned by a university professor (Hodges teaches History at Colgate University), the book is accessible and targeted--presumably--for a just-above-middlebrow readership of movie buffs, enlightened culture fans, and curious bibliophiles in search of an offbeat bio. Its availability is obviously welcomed by scholars of Asian American and Film Studies, to say nothing of Wong's loyal "keepers of the flame." While the book cites sources and features a bibliography, filmography and list of Wong's television appearances, it isn't "academic" in tone, nor is it the puff piece or hackwork that some have made it out to be. It isn't as great as it could be, but isn't terrible either.While I've seemingly dwelled upon the book's weaknesses, there are many things to admire here, and we should be grateful to Hodges for bringing to light many hitherto unknown and obscure facts about Anna May Wong, such as her interview with the Frankfort School philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin (alas, not yet available in English translation), or her long-standing friendship and correspondence with 20th Century (Harlem) Renaissance Man, Carl Van Vechten, or that she was the likely inspiration for songwriter Eric Maschwitz's romantic standard, "These Foolish Things."The author has done a commendable job of gathering the facts. Hodges has traveled the world in search of printed primary and secondary sources, and his book is an admirable compendium of excerpts from yellowing press clippings and movies magazines from long ago and far away, and a fair sampling of some up-to-date theories and perspectives, too. He did not interview Wong's surviving brother, Richard (it's been said that he doesn't grant interviews with anyone, anyway), but he did travel to China and discovered new information and materials on the Chinese branch of her father's family. Hodges excels at gathering material and archival research, and his book will undoubtedly inspire other writers and scholars in their own research into Wong's life, films and legacy.I think his treatment of her personal life is as in-depth as can be expected for a subject born a hundred years ago, and who died before a "revival" kicked in. Hodges paints his subject as a woman of wit, talent, intelligence (she spoke several languages), and courage. He writes of her triumphs and disappointments, from her earliest years growing up a movie-obsessed kid on the outskirts of L.A.'s Chinatown, to her achievements on stage and screen, to her twilight years in Tinseltown.The author reflects a global view of the star who was often "too Chinese" for European American Hollywood, and "too American" for Nationalist China. Hodges, himself married to a Chinese, demonstrates particular insight into Wong's duality, and the peculiar cultural/racial tightrope she traversed. He also writes with authority on the authenticity and appropriateness of the actress' various ethnic hairdos, costumes, gestures and dances in many film roles. Still, I think he goes overboard in always attributing the introduction of these elements to Wong's overt contribution or sly "coding" of ethnographically correct elements and their "political and national associations" into mainstream European and European American films.Hodges, who has in the past written on African American history, is particularly sensitive to matters of race and civil rights, and is quite effective in conveying the particular hardships that American citizens of Chinese descent had to endure in the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 until its repeal only during Wong's lifetime. He writes compellingly of Wong's ambivalence about her Chinese heritage and its traditions--she was in most ways a thoroughly modern American woman--and how an extended trip to the land of her ancestry was something of a life-changing experience for the star.The author touches on just about every aspect of Wong's life and work, and various mass-media interpretations of the same. Hodges also explores Wong's legacy, and shows that he is hip to the long-standing "camp" appreciation of Wong, and of artists like Andy Warhol, Martin Wong and Ray Johnson who executed works devoted to the exotic star. He also shows that Wong, who might be accused of perpetuating unflattering perspectives of Asians in her film roles, poses a problematic figure to scholars of Asian American history.Anna May Wong is a fascinating subject, and Hodges is in so many ways an insightful and sympathetic biographer. Yet, his isn't quite the biography its subject deserves. (See Barry Paris' LOUISE BROOKS, (Knopf, New York, 1989) for an example of a thoroughly riveting, incisive and authoritative account of a film star and one of Wong's contemporaries.) If this book is ever released in paperback, let's hope that it is a "revised" edition; there is plenty of good material here for a judicious editor to craft into a much better book.
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend PDF
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend EPub
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend Doc
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend iBooks
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend rtf
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend Mobipocket
Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend Kindle
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar