“[An] extraordinary account of the hardship and rampant racism Oberon…faced during Hollywood’s golden age.” ― New York Times Book Review 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. 20 images "The chroniclers of classic-era Hollywood have never quite known what to do with Merle Oberon.… So it takes chutzpah and sympathy to write a biography about Oberon, but Mayukh Sen has both." ― Ty Burr, Wall Street Journal "Mayukh Sen cheerfully reclaims [Oberon’s] story, narrating it with sensitivity and verve." ― Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times "Sen’s story shines throughout." ― Akanksha Singh, Los Angeles Review of Books "Sen elegantly and thoroughly performs a work of historical recovery." ― Kendra Nordin Beato, Christian Science Monitor "Oberon’s story is far richer than any of her screen roles.… The book is a fascinating portrait of a woman of ambition as well as a look at Hollywood’s color barriers." ― Daniel Bubbeo, Newsday "[A] scrupulous and moving biography.… Oberon’s elan embosses Sen’s easy and engaging prose.… Thanks to Sen’s insightful, compassionate, and historically-attuned narrative skill, the significance of Oberon’s signature is legible beyond the page." ― Sumaiya Aftab Ahmed, Metropolitan Review "As the critic Mayukh Sen attests in his recent biography, Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star ―which briskly, eruditely circles the question of what America wants from its stars when they come from the margins―the truth surrounding Oberon’s origins was a lifelong act of denial rooted in the bigotry of her time." ― Nirris Nagendrarajah, MUBI Notebook "Mr. Sen carefully corrects Charles Higham’s fanciful biography and filmographies that mistakenly attribute certain roles to Oberon.… One of the most excruciating scenes in this powerful biography is Oberon’s late in life visit to Tasmania, still unable to admit the fiction of her birth there." ― Carl Rollyson, New York Sun "Merle Oberon, one of Hollywood’s first South Asian movie stars, gets her due in this engrossing biography, which masterfully explores Oberon’s painful upbringing, complicated racial identity, and much more." ― Sophia M. Stewart, Millions "Throughout every up and down of Oberon’s career, Sen pays her―and his readers―the implicit compliment of not turning his subject into a saint.… Love, Queenie is earnestly affectionate but pulls none of these punches, which makes it both bracing and refreshing reading, the year’s first genuinely worthwhile movie star biography. All previous studies of this troubled, fascinating figure can be readily retired." ― Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Review "Sen’s book is one of the best film-related biographies I’ve read. It vividly recreates a complex, often painful life that can be admired not just for her matchless physical beauty but also for how she dealt with its many challenges, above all with the suppression of that other self that never went away but had to be kept in its place." ― Brian McFarlane, Sydney Morning Herald "Her story was alluring enough to become the subject of biographies, novel and tele