You might not know the name Tyrus Wong, but you probably know some of the images he created, including scenes from the beloved Disney classic Bambi. Yet when he came to this country as a child, Tyrus was an illegal immigrant locked up in an offshore detention center. How did he go on to a long and prosperous career drawing animation cels, storyboards, and greeting cards that shaped the American imagination? 
 
Background Artist shares the inspiring story of Tyrus Wong’s remarkable 106-year life and showcases his wide array of creative work, from the paintings and fine art prints he made working for Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration to the unique handmade kites he designed and flew on the Santa Monica beach. It tells how he came to the United States as a 10-year-old boy in 1920, at a time when the Chinese Exclusion Act barred him from legal citizenship. Yet it also shows how Wong found American communities that welcomed him and nurtured his artistic talent. Covering everything from his work as a studio sketch artist for Warner Bros. to the best-selling Christmas cards he designed for Hallmark and other greeting card companies, this book celebrates a multi-talented Asian-American artist and pioneer. 

KAREN FANG is a film scholar and cultural critic who writes for museums and film festivals around the world. A Professor of English at the University of Houston, her previous books include Arresting Cinema: Surveillance in Hong Kong Film and Romantic Writing and the Empire of Signs: Periodical Culture and Post-Napoleonic Authorship.  
 

"In Background Artist, Tyrus Wong finally receives the biography he deserves. Placing Wong’s life within the broader narrative of Asian American history, Karen Fang illuminates the ways in which events ranging from Chinese Exclusion to Japanese American wartime incarceration to the creation of the Model Minority myth influenced Wong's work as an artist. Fang’s engaging, highly readable style, makes this a must-read for academic and general audiences alike."

“In her compulsively readable, painstakingly researched biography of the multi-hyphenate Tyrus Wong—storyboard and sketch artist at Disney and Warner Bros., painter, illustrator, Hallmark card designer and kite maker, Chinese émigré and American trailblazer—Karen Fang skillfully blends political, cultural, and motion-picture history to tell the gripping story of one of classical Hollywood’s unsung heroes.”

"Karen Fang has created a sweeping and richly detailed portrait of Tyrus Wong that captures both the breadth and beauty of his art and the complexity and often cruel irony of living in a society that simultaneously embraced and tried to erase him. Background Artist is a stunning achievement."

"In this deeply researched and timely biography, Karen Fang rightly positions Tyrus Wong at the center of American visual culture of the mid-20th century. Background Artist brings Wong and the Chinese diaspora to the foreground, reorienting how we think about Hollywood, California history, and American commercial production, generally."