A brave British widow goes to Siam and--by dint of her principled and
indomitable character--inspires that despotic nation to abolish slavery
and absolute rule: this appealing legend first took shape after the
Civil War when Anna Leonowens came to America from Bangkok and succeeded
in becoming a celebrity author and lecturer. Three decades after her
death, in the 1940s and 1950s, the story would be transformed into a
powerful Western myth by Margaret Landon's best-selling book Anna and
the King of Siam and Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and
I.
But who was Leonowens and why did her story take hold? Although it has
been known for some time that she was of Anglo-Indian parentage and that
her tales about the Siamese court are unreliable, not until now, with
the publication of Masked, has there been a deeply researched account
of her extraordinary life. Alfred Habegger, an award-winning biographer,
draws on the archives of five continents and recent Thai-language
scholarship to disclose the complex person behind the mask and the
troubling facts behind the myth. He also ponders the curious fit between
Leonowens's compelling fabrications and the New World's innocent
dreams--in particular the dream that democracy can be spread through
quick and easy interventions.
Exploring the full historic complexity of what it once meant to pass as
white, Masked pays close attention to Leonowens's midlevel origins in
British India, her education at a Bombay charity school for Eurasian
children, her material and social milieu in Australia and Singapore, the
stresses she endured in Bangkok as a working widow, the latent
melancholy that often afflicted her, the problematic aspects of her
self-invention, and the welcome she found in America, where a circle of
elite New England abolitionists who knew nothing about Southeast Asia
gave her their uncritical support. Her embellished story would again
capture America's imagination as World War II ended and a newly
interventionist United States looked toward Asia.
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association
of School Librarians
Best Regional Special Interest Boosk, selected by the Public Library
Reviewers
