My name is Paula Yoo, and I’m going to read from Shining Star, The Anna May Wong Story, published by Lee and Low books and illustrated by Lin Wang. I’m going to read the opening for you. Anna May Wong struggled to free herself. Tight ropes bound her to the railroad tracks. A plume of smoke puffed into the air as a train rumbled toward her.
Stop daydreaming! Startled, Anna May Wong opened her eyes. The train vanished. Steam, not smoke, hissed from a nearby boiler filled with dirty clothes. “Get back to work,” snapped her father. “We have a full day’s worth of laundry to clean and press.” [sighs] Anna May sighed. No longer a damsel in distress in an exciting movie. She was just a nine-year-old girl toiling away at her father’s laundry in Los Angeles’ gritty Chinatown.
Her sisters, Mary and Lulu, scoured clothes with washing powder against scrub boards. Younger brothers, James and Frank, squeezed wet trousers through squeaky cylindrical dryers. Her mother hung up clean dresses to dry on a rod along the ceiling. Picking up a heavy iron from the coal-burning stove, Anna May felt the familiar ache in her arm. She saw the small burn scars that covered her arms. She longed to escape this dreary backbreaking work.
When Anna May finished ironing the shirts, she put them in a basket to lug up the hill to customers’ homes. After she completed her deliveries, Anna May counted five pennies in tips. That was enough to buy a movie ticket for the afternoon matinee. There was nothing Anna May enjoyed more than sneaking way to the cinema. Watching a movie, she could escape from her everyday life, travel to interesting places, and experience new things.
So, that’s a little bit of Shining Star, and as you can see, Anna May Wong would achieve that. She’d become a movie star, and she got to go to interesting new places and meet interesting people and do very exciting things in Hollywood.
