Portrait of Anna May Wong , 1934
Photograph
[2009.300.1507 ]

Anna May Wong (1905-1961), the first well-known Chinese American actress in 1920s Hollywood, was an influential fashion icon for Chinese Canadian women of her time. Wong had relatable lived experiences with many second-generation American/Canadian women with Chinese heritage. Growing up in the exclusion era, she used self-fashioning practices to fight against Western people’s negative perceptions of being Chinese. She adopted fashion as a survival strategy to break stereotypes and reinvent a transnational identity. Wong combined her Chinese makeup, such as thin eyebrows and elongated eyeliners, with a European accent and North American clothing. Her on-screen image inspired Chinese Canadian women of her time to use “strategic hybridity” to fight for more possibilities and self-expressions.

Exhibited by:

Violet Wolfe

Other works by Unknown

TREE , 2016
SMUSD VAPA
Back of Wordsworth Cottage at Grasmere 16 Aug 1850
Wordsworth Grasmere
St. Mary, north aisle, east window, 3rd light, upper panel: Saint Agnes , 15th century
Baleigh Drummond
Dove Cottage , Date unknown
Wordsworth Grasmere
Breviary , 1500
Baleigh Drummond

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