The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam Book

Ann Marie Fleming dedicates this book to her grandmother Mina, daughter of Chinese performer Long Tack Sam. Long Tack Sam and his Austrian wife Poldi traveled all over the world with their two daughters, who wound up performing for much of their childhood years. (They also had a younger son who didn't do as much performing.) One of their daughters, Mina, is of course Ann Marie's grandmother. She stopped performing in her early twenties and didn't talk much about her years traveling the world and performing with her family.

By the time Fleming started writing this book, she knew very little about her great grandfather, though very soon the information started flooding in. In writing this book (and I believe she made a film on the subject, too), she not only learned Long Tack Sam was a world famous magician and performer, but also that she had family all over the world.

This is a great book, really interesting in terms of the history of performance and in terms of the challenges of a biracial couple in the earlier 1900s. Fleming does a lot of work to try to contextualize the lives of her great grandparents in terms of what was going on in the world. She has little time-lines on many pages. She also uses illustrations and photographs, old playbills , etc. It's something of a biography of her great grandfather, but also the story of her family as a whole and an exploration of why they drifted apart and why the memory of Long Tack Sam faded so quickly.

I appreciate the format, the mode of storytelling, and Fleming's reflectiveness (is that a word?).