American Flygirl

Starred review from May 13, 2024
In this high-spirited account, historian Ankeny (The Girl and the Bombardier) profiles Hazel Ying Lee, the first Chinese American woman to fly for the U.S. military. Born in 1912 Portland, Ore., young Hazel was athletic, adventuresome, eager to break down social barriers for Asian American women, and restless in the menial jobs open to her. Shortly after falling in love with flying during a 1932 plane ride, she learned of a local flight school that was training Chinese Americans for China’s war effort against Japan. To raise money to attend (as the only woman trainee), Hazel finessed herself a job as an elevator operator at a department store where Asian workers had not previously been allowed in customer-facing roles. Once in China, due to her gender Hazel was relegated to desk work in Guangzhou. During Japan’s 1938 invasion of that city, friends credited her preternatural calm for saving their lives by facilitating their escape. Back in America, she became one of the first women pilots to fly combat aircraft domestically. Her service, which featured many risky missions, was cut short in 1944, when safety missteps by others led to Hazel’s death in a midair collision. Arkeny’s cinematic storytelling is buoyed by her zestful portrait of Hazel, who comes across as remarkably unfazed by her era’s rampant discrimination. It’s a compulsively readable tale of odds-defying derring-do.