Marion Wong
Filmmaker
Marion Wong (1895-1970) was born in Oakland, California, to second-generation Chinese American parents. Although she was only formally educated through the third grade, she succeeded in becoming the first Asian American to direct and star in a film, The Curse of Quon Gwon, when she was only twenty-one years of age. Wong was a courageous woman who broke cultural and ethnic barriers in her film, where she explored what life is like for families who had to adapt to the United States from China. She is admired not only for being the first Asian American to make a film, but also for being the first woman to do so.
(Portrait by Pamela Martinez-Aranda, SFSU 2013)
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