New Books in Film Marshall Poe

In 2022, the U.S. Mint released the first batch of its American Women Quarters series, celebrating the achievements of U.S. women throughout its history. The first set of five included Maya Angelou, Sally Ride…and Anna May Wong, the first Asian-American to ever appear on U.S. currency.
Katie Gee Salisbury takes on Anna May Wong’s life in her book Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong (Dutton, 2024). The biography takes readers through Wong’s life, from her start in Hollywood’s early days, her struggles against prejudiced studio executives unwilling to give her the spotlight, through to her groundbreaking trip to China.
In this interview, Katie and I talk about Anna May Wong’s life, her struggles against censorship, and what films you should watch to understand Wong as an actress.
A fifth-generation Chinese American from Southern California, Katie has spoken and written about Anna May Wong on MSNBC, in the New York Times and in Vanity Fair. She also writes the newsletter Half-Caste Woman. She was a 2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship finalist and gave the TED Talk “As American as Chop Suey.” Follow on Instagram at @annamaywongbook and on Twitter at @ksalisbury.
Other links:
—Katie on writing Anna May Wong’s biography, for Lithub
—An excerpt of Not Your China Doll, for PBS
You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books. Including its review of Not Your China Doll. Follow on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.
Nicholas Gordon is an editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.
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Is there anything so refreshing for a film fanatic as a film about grownups? The mid-budget We Own the Night (2007) is a tonic in a world of films costing five times the money but offering only one fifth the talent. Join Mike and Dan for an appreciation of a film without seven reversals at its ending or a series of explosions, but one about adults who find themselves in terrible situations from which they struggle to escape. It has major players in its cast but still feels like a deeply un-Hollywood movie; it’s the cinematic equivalent of a dull ache, and we mean that as a compliment. Prince of the City, Angels with Dirty Faces, and even the parable of the prodigal son make their way into the discussion. If 7-Up is the un-cola, this film is the un-Departed.
If you’re interested in the issue raised by the film concerning the war on drugs, you may want to read David Farber’s 2021 history of the cause and the costs.
Follow us on X or Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music by John Deley.
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Albert Brooks: Interviews (UP of Mississippi, 2024) brings together fourteen profiles of and conversations with Brooks (b. 1947), in which he contemplates, expounds upon, and hilariously jokes about the connections between his show business upbringing, an ambivalence about the film industry, the nature of fame and success, and the meaning and purpose of comedy. Throughout all these encounters, Brooks expresses an unwavering commitment to his own artistic expression as a filmmaker and a rejection of mainstream conventions. With his questioning and critical disposition, nothing seems certain for Albert Brooks except for the integrity of art and the necessity for a wry skepticism about the incongruities of everyday life in corporate America.
Brooks is neither a Hollywood insider nor an outsider. He’s somewhere in-between. Since the early 1970s, this inimitable actor-writer-director has incisively satirized the mass media system from within. After initial work as an inventive comedian, both live and on network television, Brooks contributed six shorts to the first season of Saturday Night Live, which earned him a cult following for their avant-garde form and sensibility. These were followed by his feature debut, Real Life, the first of only seven films—including Modern Romance, Lost in America, and Defending Your Life—that Brooks has directed to date. His limited output reflects not only the difficulty in financing idiosyncratic films, but equally the exacting seriousness which Brooks has in making audiences laugh and think at the same time.
Alexander Greenhough teaches in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University.
Daniel Moran earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. in History from Drew University. The author of Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers and articles on G. K. Chesterton and John Ford, he teaches research and writing at Rutgers and co-hosts the podcast Fifteen-Minute Film Fanatics, found here on the New Books Network and on X.
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In Unhomed: Cycles of Mobility and Placelessness in American Cinema (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Pamela Roberston Wojcik examines America's ambivalent and shifting attitude toward homelessness. She considers film cycles from five distinct historical moments that show characters who are unhomed and placeless, mobile rather than fixed—characters who fail, resist, or opt out of the mandate for a home of one's own.
From the tramp films of the silent era to the 2021 Oscar-winning Nomadland, Dr. Wojcik reveals a tension in the American imaginary between viewing homelessness as deviant and threatening or emblematic of freedom and independence. Blending social history with insights drawn from a complex array of films, both canonical and fringe, Dr. Wojcik effectively "unhomes" dominant narratives that cast aspirations for success and social mobility as the focus of American cinema, reminding us that genres of precarity have been central to American cinema (and the American story) all along.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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“I envy normal women—they’re free,” laments Irina Dubrovna Reed, in Jacques Tourner’s 1942 film, one as noir as Out of the Past which he would direct five years later. Join Mike and Dan for a conversation about a film that explores the same subject as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and has received, justly or not, “The Criterion Treatment.” They also talk about why Paul Schrader’s 1982 remake works on paper but not on the screen. So grab your sketchbook, steal that key, and give it a listen!
You can pick up a copy of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde here.
Follow us on X or Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music by John Deley.
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In the summer of 2016, Disney introduced its first Latina princess, Elena of Avalor. Elena, Princess of the Periphery: Disney’s Flexible Latina Girl (Rutgers University Press, 2023) by Dr. Diana Leon-Boys explores this Disney property using multiple case studies to understand its approach to girlhood and Latinidad. Following the circuit of culture model, Dr. Leon-Boys teases out moments of complex negotiations by Disney, producers, and audiences as they navigate Elena’s circulation. Case studies highlight how a flexible Latinidad is deployed through corporate materials, social media pages, theme park experiences, and the television series to create a princess who is both marginal to Disney’s normative vision of princesshood and central to Disney’s claims of diversification.
This multi-layered analysis of Disney’s mediated Latina girlhood interrogates the complex relationship between the U.S.’s largest ethnic minority and a global conglomerate that stands in for the U.S. on the global stage.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
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Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film