Anna May Wong (1921)

Born near the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles, Wong became infatuated with the movies and began acting in films at an early age of 19. Following the footsteps of Sessue Hayakawa, Anna May Wong became the first Asian American female Hollywood star. Starring in such silent films as Bits of Life and The Toll of the Sea, Anna May Wong was making it on to the big screen. After several minor roles exploiting her ‘asian-ness’ as the typical Villain/Dragon-lady, it was apparent that Wong had been transformed into a white image of forbidden lust.

It was no surprise that later on, Wong became frustrated at Hollywood for forcing her to play villainesses and rape victims while white women performed in yellow-face. It was common at the time for whites to play in foreign roles, sometimes even the entire cast. At one point, MGM deemed her "too Chinese to play a Chinese". Her biggest disappointment was losing the lead in Pearl S. Buck's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Good Earth. The male lead had gone to a white actor and anti-miscegenation laws restricted the production from casting a non-white to kiss him. It wasn’t long before Wong had enough and decided to move away to Europe to star in the Picadilly.

Wong would later return back to the United States to play a female lead role in the Daughter of Shanghai, which was completely rewritten in order to make her the heroine of the story. Wong later told the press "I like my part in this picture better than any I've had before...because this picture gives Chinese a break – we have sympathetic parts for a change! To me that means a great deal.” Wong helped to transform white misconceptions of Asians, in a period that was filled with racism and discrimination, where Asians were deemed foreign and any close interaction with them bordered taboo.

Moreover, through her public image Wong helped "humanize" Asian-Americans to white society. Asians had been viewed as perpetually foreign and inassimilable in U.S. society, but Wong's films and public image helped establish her as an Asian-American citizen at a time when laws were erected specifically to discriminate against Asian immigration and citizenship. Wong's legacy was able to transcend those contemporary notions and most importantly overthrow the belief that the East and West were inherently different

-Calvin Wong