Long Live the Wong Dynasty

a story of familial love

newspaper clipping from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 13, 1934; the Wong clan from left to right: Frank Wong, Roger Wong, Mary Wong, Wong Sam Sing, Anna May Wong, Richard Wong, and Lulu Wong

When reporters asked movie actress Anna May Wong about her family and whether she had any brothers and sisters, she answered cheerfully that there were, in fact, seven Wong children. “We’re not a family — we’re a dynasty,” she’d add with a twinkle in her eye.

As modern and outré as AMW was for a Chinese American woman in the 1920s, eschewing marriage…