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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: — A Star on the Sidewalk
Chapter 3: — Chinabug
Chapter 4: — The First Betrayal
Chapter 5: — Lotus Flower, Drowning
Chapter 6: — Europe, Where They Want Her
Chapter 7: — The Funeral She Missed
Chapter 8: — China Won’t Forgive
Chapter 9: — The Comeback That Costs
Chapter 10: — The Brightest Star
Description
The Brightest Star reimagines the life of Anna May Wong through her own intimate, first-person voice as she rides a train from Los Angeles to New York in 1960 for a rare press tour. With each mile, she opens the notebooks she’s kept for decades and the past floods in: a childhood in her father’s laundry, bullying in school, the first electric pull of silent films, and the brutal truth that Hollywood would rather paint white actors yellow than cast a Chinese-American woman as a leading lady.
As Anna May’s fame rises—from The Toll of the Sea and The Thief of Bagdad to her European reinvention and later television work—so do the costs: forbidden love, career ceilings enforced by racist laws and studio politics, family fractures, addiction, and grief. Against the backdrop of world wars, shifting immigration rules, and Hollywood’s changing eras, she keeps reaching for one thing: dignity—on screen and off.
Who Should Listen
- Listeners who want a cinematic, emotionally intimate portrait of an overlooked Hollywood pioneer fighting racism and typecasting.
- Fans of historical fiction centered on identity, ambition, and the cost of fame across multiple decades and continents.
- Anyone drawn to stories about art and survival—how a woman keeps choosing herself when every system tells her she doesn’t belong.