At Montclair Library, Tsukiyama to discuss novel on silent film star Wong

In her new novel, “The Brightest Star,” author, El Cerrito and Napa resident Gail Tsukiyama shares conceptually similar conditions with Anna May Wong, the groundbreaking Asian American film star and her book’s protagonist. Related Articles An uncontrollable creative impulse caused Wong ( ) in the early 20th century to pursue her Hollywood dreams and thereby break cultural norms espoused by her Chinese-American parents and society. The same undeniable drive powers Tsukiyama’s insatiable desire to tell stories and work in the arts despite constant awareness that Asian Americans of her generation often come from households who expected their children to choose safe, steady careers in medicine, law or academia.

Tsukiyama, a San Francisco native, is the best-selling author of seven prior novels, including “Women of the Silk,” “The Samurai’s Garden,” “Night of Many Dreams” and others. Sponsored by bookstore A Great Good Place for Books ( ) in the Oakland hills’ Montclair district, Tsukiyama will appear Nov. 28 at the Montclair Library to discuss and sign copies of “Brightest Star” ( ), released by HarperCollins Publishers this past June.

In an interview, Tsukiyama describes the first seeds of interest that led to writing what is not her first historical fiction novel but rather her first one that expands upon a historical figure’s life. “Anna May came about in a backdoor way. Even before COVID, but certainly during it, I binge-watched the television series ‘Killing Eve.

’ I remember being amazed because they had chosen Sandra Oh to play the main character. “They could have gotten any actor: It didn’t have to be an Asian American. I was thinking about how ‘Killing Eve’ would not at other times in history have been cast the way it was.

Then I remembered watching ‘Shanghai Express. ’ ” The 1932 film starred Marlene Dietrich and Anna May Wong, whose birth name was Wong Liu Tsong. Wong played a brave Chinese girl — casting her into what was one of two Asian female character tropes at the time and for decades following: tragic, demure, sacrificing demi-characters or deceitful, sexually enticing, dominatrix “dragon ladies.

” “The question in the back of my mind was, ‘What did her family think about her being an actress?’ I knew there had to be some pushback. When you’re from an old, traditional culture, it’s hard to be in the arts. What she was up against, growing up in a completely restrictive Chinese environment, was different from what I experienced, because my mom painted and art was OK, just not as a profession.

“I still knew that as a writer I wasn’t going to be a lawyer or doctor, as is often expected. In the Asian culture, I knew there was just so far you can run, although that had far more of a stranglehold on her than it had on my life. ” Not only did Wong suffer tremendous family conflict, especially with her father, she faced career ceilings and walls due to racist Hollywood practices such as “yellowface,” when non-Asian actors used makeup to play characters of Asian descent ( ).

Denied those opportunities in favor of White actors, other restrictions — if not official protocols — were dictated by society in a lifetime that included the Chinese Exclusion Act, anti-miscegenation laws and the later Hays Code ( ) that prevented Wong from being cast as a leading lady alongside a White actor or kissing a White actor on screen. A number of physical and mental health challenges plagued Wong, not the least of which was chronic alcohol abuse and, at one time, a neurological bacterial infection that led to a diagnosis of St. Vitus’ Dance ( ), which caused her body to jerk and spasm uncontrollably despite its benign-sounding name.

While researching the novel’s leading lady, Tsukiyama was struck by Wong’s tenacity and business acumen. “Perseverance got her through everything; all the emotional and physical illnesses were barriers she still climbed over,” she said. “I was fascinated with the things I discovered: She was a great reader and wrote extensively.

She had a business acumen to keep herself in the limelight. To be a star takes a certain kind of drive. I reflected on my own career.

I have the same goal to get my work out there, but I don’t know if I have that extra punch, that drive. ” The novel in some ways proves she does, because Tsukiyama says writing it frightened her more than any previous project. “To have the audacity to take a real person’s life and rework it? This was abnormal for me as a writer, but I was intrigued.

Could I take a real person and turn it into my personal world? It was a good experience. This book was a great education in that way. ” “Brightest Star” also presented a puzzle: how to piece into a solid portrayal the life of someone whose family never approved of her career or lifestyle and had destroyed many of Wong’s documents and letters.

“The family had gotten rid of her correspondence after she died. That’s a very Asian thing: to not bare your dirty laundry to the greater public. ” Although there were no letters she had received, Tsukiyama was able to access and was aided substantially by letters Wong had written to her close friends, Carl Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff.

Other circuitous but essential routes Tsukiyama took to broaden her understanding of the era included reading nonfiction background information about Hollywood from silent movies to the talkies. “It would segue, such as reading about Marlene Dietrich because there wasn’t a lot of factual information about whether or not they (Dietrich and Wong) had had an affair. It helped me decide they had.

I learned Dietrich never let someone she was attracted to out of her grasp. If she wanted to bend them to her will, she would. ” Tsukiyama says what’s most gratifying now that the book is published is raising public awareness of things like yellowface and the Hays Code — and in appearances heralding Wong’s many “firsts” while also emphasizing how racism continues and cultural change is astonishingly slow if not stagnant.

“They realize it now that they’ve read the book. That’s all you can do as a writer: Put out the story and hope it is received,” she says. .