Mayukh Sen on the History of South Asian Performers in Hollywood

Your book Love, Queenie, is coming out in March 2025. How did you come to the story of Merle Oberon née Queenie Thompson?

I first became aware of Merle as an Oscar-obsessed high schooler, when I learned she was the first performer of color ever nominated for an Academy Award (Best Actress, 1936). She had been born into poverty in India but had to conceal her maternal South Asian heritage in Old Hollywood and “pass’’ for white to overcome both Hollywood’s racist barriers and America’s federal restrictions on immigration from India. The truth of her origins emerged after her death in 1979. As embarrassing as this is for a biographer to admit, I felt a kinship with Merle—she grew up in Kolkata, the same city where my dad was from—and I found her work as Cathy in Wuthering Heights (1939) moving and powerful. There hasn’t been a proper biography of her since 1983, and I wanted to correct the record based on new information that had since emerged about her life.

Your Fellows project will be a book entitled Brown Hollywood. Can you tell us about that project and how it relates to Love, Queenie?

When I began writing Love, Queenie, I naively believed the book would be a straightforward, womb-to-tomb account of Merle’s life. But as I worked through drafts, I found myself pursuing something a bit more ambitious: I wanted to set her story against its proper social and political backdrop. America had imposed a federal outlaw on immigration from India from 1917 until 1946; a Supreme Court ruling in 1923 also prevented Indians from gaining American citizenship. These laws were the result of long-simmering animus towards South Asians, and they no doubt curtailed Merle’s life but also those of other South Asian figures in Hollywood—the Anglo-Indian horror icon Boris Karloff, the action star Sabu. I found myself wanting to document, in book form, the stories of South Asian performers in Hollywood whose lives were shaped by America’s changing attitudes towards South Asians. That’s where Brown Hollywood was born.

Taste Makers, your first book, is about the lives of seven path-breaking immigrant chefs and food writers. How do you choose the subjects of your work? Is there a characteristic or idea central to a person or story you are particularly drawn to?  

I accidentally began my writing career in food, despite my childhood aspirations to become a film critic. As a result of feeling I didn’t belong on the food beat, I turned my gaze towards figures who may, too, have seen themselves as outsiders to the industry just as I did, and who pushed forward despite feeling the odds were against them. That emotional connection was key. These were quite often chefs who had been effaced in prevailing narratives of food in America. I found that immigrants were particularly susceptible to being overwritten, especially in a political moment when those in power could demonize immigrants. I wanted to combat that through my storytelling. That outlook extends to my work with Love, Queenie and Brown Hollywood: I try to look at who’s been erased, ask myself why, and then write from a place that affirms their humanity.

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