American Flygirl, by Oregon-based author Susan Tate Ankeny, tells the true story of Hazel Ying Lee (1912-1944), the first Chinese-American woman to fly for the United States military. She was also the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot’s licence and to join the renowned Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs).
Lee was trained by the famed aviator Al Greenwood at the Chinese Flying Club of Portland, a flying school founded in 1932 in response to Japan’s invasion of Manchuria. Having gained her pilot’s license that year, Lee went to China with the goal of joining the Chinese Air Force, but was rejected as a woman. She ended up flying for a private airline.
Lee was in Canton (today’s Guangzhou) when it was captured by the Japanese in late 1939. Having returned to America via Hong Kong, she joined the Women’s Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) in 1943, which later became the WASPs. In 1944, she was among the first women pilots to fly “Pursuit” or fighter aircraft for the United States military.
Lee’s story is both informative and inspiring. To serve her country and ancestral land, she broke every common stereotype and challenged every social restriction on the basis of gender and ethnicity. “She experienced a surge of empowerment when flying solo. No one could tell her what to do or how to do it. It didn’t matter whether she was man or woman, white or Asian. She was in control of her fate.”
Furthermore, American Flygirl is a valuable book for readers who are interested in the history of women aviators in America. It is clear that the author is passionate and highly knowledgeable in this regard, including the life stories of Amelia Earhart and Jackie Cochran and especially members of the WASPs.
Indeed, the author’s voice is confident, fluent and distinct, and at times witty and assertive, when writing about this history, demonstrating a broad knowledge of the political and social contexts, as well as the individual achievements, key events, and the numerous aircraft makes and models involved.
In sharp contrast, the author appears to have limited knowledge of modern Chinese history and the history of Chinese diaspora in America. When writing about this history, her observations seem limited and superficial, drawing on archival research and brief, fanciful imagination whose results are used to fill the gaps between what she does know and love.
In fact, the author’s concerns with the plight of Chinese Americans – and Chinese American women in particular – are generic and generalised, lacking depth, and borrowed from secondhand accounts of the lived experiences of early generations of Chinese Americans. It may be suggested that, without the tumultuous events in China in the first half of the 20th century as a setting, it is unlikely that her portrayal of Lee would have been any different if Lee was an American woman of Japanese, Korean, Italian, Spanish or even African background.
In other words, it seems that Lee is the subject of this book more because she was a woman than she was a Chinese American woman. Specifically, the author’s admiration and advocacy for the WASPs and other women aviators is so prominent that perhaps the book should be retitled as “American Flygirls”, as if Lee’s story is just a lead-in to the much greater and grander and certainly more glamorous stories of the WASPs and other women aviators in America.
This may sound harsh, as due credits should be given to the author who has done extensive research and shed considerable light on the involvement of Chinese American pilots both before and throughout China’s war against Japan. The contributions of this small community is worth preserving, a crucial chapter in the history of Chinese diaspora in America, and deserves to be known by a wider audience in both the English-speaking and Chinese-speaking worlds.
It is hoped that this book, together with the archival resources that have inspired its writing, can lead to further research in the history of Chinese Americans by #OwnVoices scholars and authors.
Meanwhile, the book can benefit from further proofreading in order to remove the many typos, grammar and punctuation errors, and awkward sentences. Any experienced editor can amend obvious mistakes such as the description that Hazel’s father immigrated to Portland in 1880 while fleeing China “after fighting broke out between the Nationalists and the Communists”. Another unforgivable mistake is to refer to Chiang Kai-Shek as “General Kai-Shek”.
Other minor issues include the doubtful presence of the Red Cross workers in Canton and the overall South China in 1938, and the lack of citations of many bold statements in the book, such as the reception of Robert McCawley Short in China. It would also be nice to have relevant archival images and other documentation displayed in the book.
Finally, the paragraphs describing Clifford Louie‘s and Arthur Chin‘s careers are overly simplified. In Louie’s case, while it is obvious that some details are taken straight from Wikipedia, it is intriguing that only those of his experiences outside of China are mentioned. Could this be another indicator that the book was written for mainstream American readers, instead of Chinese American readers and even Chinese readers?
Note: This book review is based on an e-ARC of American Flygirl supplied by the book’s publisher via NetGalley.
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 