Monday, March 26, 2007

The Chan Sisters

I've been spending a lot of time of Wikipedia reading countless biographies. While watching KQED's "The Josh Kornbluth Show" tonight, Josh interviews Asian-American playwright Philip Kan Gotanda. So I typed Mr. Gotanda's name into Wikipedia. While he has no biography details listed in Wikipedia, his name is among a list of prominent Japanese-Americans.

This led me to look up the list of prominent Chinese-Americans. Of course there's Connie Chung, Bruce Lee, and Yo-Yo Ma. Further down the list, I was surprised to see sisters I've only known as actors. What surprised me was to find their ethnicity is half-Chinese, half-Caucasian.

Their birthnames are Jennifer and Margaret Chan. We know them as Jennifer and Meg Tilly. Their father is Chinese-American and mother is Irish-Canadian. Tilly is their mother's maiden name. Neither Tilly has been in any recent films. Jennifer has recently been seen on the poker circuit, while Meg is no longer acting.

According to Wikipedia (accuracy not reliable), Jennifer has 2 cats named Corky and Violet. How cool. Corky and Violet were the lesbian lovers/heroines in the excellent Wachowski film, "Bound".

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