Anna May Wong: a border-crossing ‘minor’ star mediating performance

Abstract

This essay examines Anna May Wong's visual and vocal performance of (racial) difference in her late 1930s films and radio play. Drawing upon theories of embodied performance and the actor—acting—role structure, I explore ways of defining difference as gradation (rather than the self—other binary). I argue that Wong's performance of the ‘minor’ position enables difference from within the dominant matrix, thereby opening up a flexible structure of minority positioning that is also instructive for today's globalscapes.

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