Love, Queenie
Merle Oberon, Hollywood's First South Asian Star
by Mayukh Sen
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Pub Date 4 Mar 2025 | Archive Date 28 Feb 2025
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Description
A beautiful reclamation of a pioneering South Asian actress captures her glittering, complicated life and lasting impact on Hollywood.
Merle Oberon made history when she was announced as a nominee for the Best Actress Oscar in 1936. Hers was a face that “launched a thousand ships,” a so-called exotic beauty who the camera loved and fans adored. Her nomination for The Dark Angel marked the first time the Academy recognized a performer of color. Almost ninety years before actress Michelle Yeoh would triumph in the same category, Oberon, born to a South Asian mother and white father in India, broke through a racial barrier—but no one knew it. Oberon was “passing” for white.
In the first biography of Oberon (1911–1979) in more than forty years, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and heretofore untapped archival material to capture the exceptional life of an oft-forgotten talent.
Born into poverty, Queenie Thompson dreamt of big-screen stardom. By sheer force of will, she immigrated to London in her teens and met film mogul Alexander Korda, who christened her “Merle Oberon” and invented the story that she was born to European parents in Tasmania. Her new identity was her ticket into Hollywood. When she was only in her twenties, Oberon dazzled as Cathy in Wuthering Heights opposite Laurence Olivier. Against the backdrop of Hollywood’s racially exclusionary Golden Age and the United States’s hostile immigration policy towards South Asians in the twentieth century, Oberon rose to the highest echelons of the film-world elite, all while keeping a secret that could have destroyed her career.
Tracing Oberon’s story from her Indian roots to her final days surrounded by wealth and glamor, Sen questions the demands placed on stars in life and death. His compassionate, compelling chronicle illuminates troubling truths on race, gender, and power that still resonate today.
Advance Praise
"A deeply drawn portrait of the fascinating screen star Merle Oberon. Told with empathy and rigor, it’s also a grand tour of Hollywood’s opulence and racism through the decades. A compelling story of one woman’s struggle to make a life for herself against the odds. I could not put this book down." -Padma Lakshmi, author of Love, Loss, and What We Ate
"This entrancing book left me reflecting on the society that 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
"Through Mayukh Sen’s remarkable book, I discovered a brilliant, ambitious actress who could achieve visibility only by making her past invisible. After reading Love, Queenie, I hold two opposing thoughts in my mind: ‘Look how far we’ve come,’ and ‘Not much has changed.’" -Poorna Jagannathan, actress, Never Have I Ever
"A deeply sympathetic portrait of one of Hollywood’s most misunderstood figures. Love, Queenie is not only a love letter to Merle Oberon’s underappreciated 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
"The saga of Merle Oberon is one of Hollywood’s most extraordinary tales—one that has, at long last, found the right teller in Mayukh Sen, whose wonderful book is written with compassion, clear eyes, and panache." -Michael Schulman, author of Oscar Wars
"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
Available Editions
| EDITION | Hardcover |
| ISBN | 9781324050810 |
| PRICE | US$29.99 (USD) |
| PAGES | 320 |
