The Brightest Star

Tsukiyama (The Color of Air) delivers a comprehensive but lackluster fictionalized memoir of Anna May Wong, the first successful Chinese American film actor. Since Anna May’s childhood in 1910s Los Angeles, she’s dreamed of becoming a movie star. Her traditional father, who runs a laundry, is staunchly opposed, but her mother and older sister are quietly supportive. At 16, Anna May lands a breakout role in The Toll of the Seal, though pervasive racism and anti-miscegenation laws dog her career and mostly limit her to stereotyped bit parts. She’s more readily accepted in Europe than China, where the Chinese press excoriates her with accusations that she’s dishonoring her heritage. Still, after her father and younger siblings return to his ancestral Chinese village, she visits them in 1936. She faces more challenges in the 1950s, first with a serious medical diagnosis and then with fewer opportunities for roles, but her ambition persists. Tsukiyama nails the tone of an amateur memoirist struggling to get her story down, but it doesn’t make for very dynamic fiction, and the rushed pacing doesn’t help. Tsukiyama makes clear the miraculous nature of Wong’s story but doesn’t quite find the form to convey it. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary Agency. (June)