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Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star
by Mayukh Sen
A beautiful reclamation of a pioneering South Asian actress captures her glittering, complicated life and lasting impact on Hollywood.
Merle Oberon attained Hollywood immortality with a nomination for a Best Leading Actress Oscar for her role in the 1935 film The Dark Angel. It was the first time a performer of color had received an acting nomination at the Academy Awards, but because Oberon concealed her South Asian identity throughout her lifetime and "passed" for white, very few people knew it. In Love, Queenie, the first biography in more than forty years of the India-born actress, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and previously untapped archival research to animate the Wuthering Heights star's hard-won journey to fame. From an upbringing in poverty, she rose to the highest echelons of the film-world elite during Hollywood's racially exclusionary Golden Age. A major biography of an often-overlooked talent, Love, Queenie empathetically captures one woman's story while illuminating truths on race, gender, and power that still resonate today.
"Sen's thorough research, graceful prose, and nuanced analyses of the systems of oppression framing Oberon's life offer a layered and engrossing portrait of a woman who skyrocketed to well-earned stardom while enduring the trauma of hiding her race. An extraordinary biography of an extraordinary South Asian woman." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Film critic Sen delivers a moving biography of Merle Oberon….[H]e emphasizes the stirring determination she showed in scrapping her way to the film industry's upper echelon. It's a poignant account of the sacrifices that enabled an extraordinary career." ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Sen anchors Oberon's complicated story and spotty filmography within the racism and classism of the early twentieth century, crediting her as a pioneer for the growing cadre of South Asian actors only now breaking through filmdom's capricious prejudices. Sen finally gives this oft-overlooked actor her due." ―Booklist (starred review)
"Love, Queenie introduced me to a star whose life story I now find extraordinary. More, this entrancing book left me reflecting on the society which compelled such a star to hide who she was all her life. An invaluable biography rich with surprises, heartbreak, and the complicated fulfillment of dreams." ―Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
"Mayukh Sen has written a deeply sympathetic portrait of one of Hollywood's most misunderstood figures. Love, Queenie is not only a love letter to Merle Oberon's under appreciated filmography, but also an unflinching examination of how the era's racial codes constricted her life, on and off the screen." ―Katie Gee Salisbury, author of Not Your China Doll
"Merle Oberon never got to tell the true story of her life. Mayukh Sen finally has, and it rivals that of any character she played on the screen. I couldn't put this book down." ―Carla Valderrama, author of This Was Hollywood
This information about Love, Queenie was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Mayukh Sen is the James Beard Award–winning author of Taste Makers. He has written on film for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and the Criterion Collection. He teaches journalism at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.
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