"Just Like Really"

She was Gene Kelly's favorite TV dancing partner at age 5, performing in Las Vegas by age 7, this "Chinese Shirley Temple" appeared in scores of movies and TV shows throughout her childhood, Lee recounts the evolution of a Chinese American child performer during the 1950s and 1960s through interactions with her family and with Hollywood luminaries of bygone years. What happened when Lee grew up into the "awkward years," too young to play the ingenue, too old to play the cute Asian orphan she'd portrayed in countless TV shows? Lee pivoted into studying paleontology as she described in her widely published short story, "Hollywood and the Pits." After six years in academia studying fossils, she returned to the stage to perform in A Chorus Line in 1977. Upon receiving her MS degree in geology, Lee managed an alternative wastewater treatment plant as a Disney Imagineer before finding her life's work as an award-winning dramatist. This "Uncommon Chinese American Memoir" reveals a life of reinvention, resourcefulness and resilience. Most memorably it shines with the humor of her 94-year-old mother, who tells her, "You'll be just like really" (meaning better than the original), when the author is faced with her latest life challenge.