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Preparation for publication of an open access digital publication about Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong (1905-1961).

This is the first book-length study to focus on the cross-media performances of Anna May Wong—a pioneering Chinese-American actress who forged a transnational career prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Grounded in my eight-year multi-continental archival research, this book answers a pressing question: how might a marginalized ethnic performer, despite her precarious citizenship status due to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, instigate a race-gender-informed rethinking of Euro-American film/media history, and resist social injustices through performances and audience engagement? Foregrounding Wong’s perseverant labor as an actress and an anti-Fascist activist, this book retools glamor-based star studies as performer-worker studies to illuminate contributions rendered by women, minorities and all those considered “minor” players in dominant media and society. This book speaks to humanities and social sciences engagement with (post)coloniality, citizenship, precarious labor, and agency.