My second book, Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star (“extraordinary,” The New York Times Book Review), was published by W.W. Norton & Company on March 4, 2025. You can buy it from Bookshop, directly from my publisher, the Academy Museum Store, or anywhere else where books are sold.
You can find out more about some of my launch events in New York and Los Angeles here. You can read essays based on the book in The Atlantic here and Air Mail here, and an excerpt on Slate here; you can listen to me on NPR discussing the book here.
FROM THE PUBLISHER: 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.
PRAISE FOR LOVE, QUEENIE:
“'What does America want from its stars when they come from the margins?' Sen asks in this extraordinary account of the hardship and rampant racism Oberon, a movie star who spent her entire career hiding her South Asian roots, faced during Hollywood’s golden age.” — The New York Times Book Review
”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, The Wall Street Journal
”In Love, Queenie, writer Mayukh Sen cheerfully reclaims her story, narrating it with sensitivity and verve….[T]he book is written as if living alongside Oberon during her lifetime, giving emotional heft to her sometimes difficult choices.” — Carolyn Kellogg, The Los Angeles Times
”With fluid pacing, Sen traces the 'culture of exclusion' of the times that hobbled and channeled Oberon’s life and career….Sen’s story shines throughout. The narrative is woven with surgical precision, never flaunting the obvious depth of its research.” — Akanksha Singh, Los Angeles Review of Books
“Sen’s thorough research, graceful prose, and nuanced analyses of the systems of oppression framing Oberon’s life offer a layered and engrossing portrait of a woman who skyrocketed to well-earned stardom while enduring the trauma of hiding her race. An extraordinary biography of an extraordinary South Asian woman.”— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Film critic Sen (Taste Makers) delivers a moving biography of Merle Oberon (1911–1979), the first actor of color nominated for an Academy Award … Though Sen covers the tragic elements of Oberon’s story (she endured a barrage of cosmetic procedures, including skin bleaching at the behest of her studio, in an effort to overcome Hollywood’s ageism and racism), he emphasizes the stirring determination she showed in scrapping her way to the film industry’s upper echelon. It’s a poignant account of the sacrifices that enabled an extraordinary career.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Sen anchors Oberon’s complicated story and spotty filmography within the racism and classism of the early twentieth century, crediting her as a pioneer for the growing cadre of South Asian actors only now breaking through filmdom’s capricious prejudices. Sen finally gives this oft-overlooked actor her due.” — Booklist (starred review)
“Through Mayukh Sen’s remarkable book, I discovered a brilliant, ambitious actress who could achieve visibility only by making her past invisible. After reading Love, Queenie, I hold two opposing thoughts in my mind: ‘Look how far we’ve come,’ and ‘Not much has changed.’” — Poorna Jagannathan, actress, Never Have I Ever
”The saga of Merle Oberon is one of Hollywood’s most extraordinary tales—one that has, at long last, found the right teller in Mayukh Sen, whose wonderful book is written with compassion, clear eyes, and panache.” — Michael Schulman, author of Oscar Wars
“Love, Queenie is a deeply drawn portrait of the fascinating screen star Merle Oberon. Told with empathy and rigor, it’s also a grand tour of Hollywood’s opulence and racism through the decades. A compelling story of one woman’s struggle to make a life for herself against the odds. I could not put this book down.” — Padma Lakshmi, author of Love, Loss, and What We Ate
“Love, Queenie introduced me to a star whose life story I now find extraordinary. More, this entrancing book left me reflecting on the society which compelled such a star to hide who she was all her life. An invaluable biography rich with surprises, heartbreak, and the complicated fulfillment of dreams.” — Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
“Mayukh Sen has written a deeply sympathetic portrait of one of Hollywood’s most misunderstood figures. Love, Queenie is not only a love letter to Merle Oberon’s under appreciated filmography, but also an unflinching examination of how the era’s racial codes constricted her life, on and off the screen.” — Katie Gee Salisbury, author of Not Your China Doll
“Merle Oberon never got to tell the true story of her life. Mayukh Sen finally has, and it rivals that of any character she played on the screen. I couldn’t put this book down.” — Carla Valderrama, author of This Was Hollywood
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mayukh Sen is the James Beard Award-winning author of Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America (2021) and the forthcoming Love, Queenie: Merle Oberon, Hollywood’s First South Asian Star (March 4, 2025), both from W.W. Norton & Company.
He is a Class of 2025 Fellow at New America, where he has been named the inaugural Shourie Family Fellow to write his third book, provisionally titled Brown Hollywood. It will be an examination of the history of South Asian immigration to America from the early twentieth century to the present day, told through the stories of South Asian performers in Hollywood whose lives intersected with—and were informed by—changes in American immigration policy.
His work has been anthologized in four editions of The Best American Food and Travel Writing series. He received his BA from Stanford University in 2014. He teaches journalism at New York University and lives in Brooklyn.