Stephen Amidon
Chinese Whispers
Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History
By Yunte Huang
W W Norton & Co 354pp £19.99 order from our bookshop
Hollywood has always served as a seething melting pot. From the racist spectacular Birth of a Nation (1915) to Al Jolson’s blackface in The Jazz Singer (1927) to Hattie McDaniel’s groundbreaking Oscar for Gone with the Wind (1939), popular cinema challenged viewers to ponder the complexities of race long before it became a fit topic for textbooks, newspapers and political debate.
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