Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend, by Graham Russell Gao Hodges Anna May Wong was the first internationally acclaimed Asian American actor, with a career that spanned decades, from 1919 to 1961, and Hodges’ biography is a meticulously researched and carefully constructed account of one of early […]
Last March—as readers of this blog may recall—Jennifer Lawrence climbed the stairs to accept the Oscar for Best Actress, and tripping on the hem of her voluminous gown, fell on her way to the stage. But like the young and seemingly unflappable person she is, she gamely brushed herself off […]
On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.