“Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America” book talk with Jeff Chang

Join us for a conversation and book signing with award-winning writer, critic, and cultural observer Jeff Chang as he brings fresh insight and humanity to the legendary Bruce Lee in Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America. His new book is not only a sweeping, intimate biography of a global martial arts icon, but is also the untold story of the rise of Asian America. 

More than a half-century after his passing, Bruce Lee is as towering a figure to people around the world as ever. On his path to becoming a global icon, he popularized martial arts in the West and became a bridge to people and cultures from the East. Yet just as he was set to conquer Hollywood, he died of cerebral edema at age thirty-two. While his legend has bloomed in the decades since, his personal story has remained untold.

Forgotten is the stark reality of the baby boy born in segregated San Francisco, who spent his youth in war-ravaged, fight-crazy Hong Kong. Forgotten is the curious teenager who found his way back to America, embraced West Coast counterculture and meshed it with Asian worldviews. Forgotten is the man whose presence broke barriers and helped shape the idea of what being an Asian in America is.

Water Mirror Echo—a title inspired by Bruce Lee’s own way of moving, being and responding to the world—reminds us of his core essence. In the hands of author Jeff Chang, Bruce Lee’s story brims with the personal. Based on in-depth interviews with Lee’s closest intimates, newly available personal documents, and featuring dozens of photographs from Lee’s family archive, Chang reveals the man behind the iconography. Stirringly, he shows how Lee’s growing fame ushered in something even more enduring—the creation of Asian America.

Author Biography

Jeff Chang is an award-winning writer, host, and cultural organizer known for his keen observations on culture, politics, the arts, and music. 

His first book, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, was named one of the best nonfiction books of the last quarter century. His other books include Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post Civil Rights America), and We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation. Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America, a sweeping cultural biography, is his newest release.

Jeff has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature and a Lucas Artist Fellow. He has received the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award, and was named to the Frederick Douglass 200. He was named by The Utne Reader as one of “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World” and by KQED as an Asian Pacific American Local Hero. He is also the host of the podcasts Signal Award-winning Edge of Reason, and KALW’s Notes From the Edge. 

A national leader in narrative strategy and a recognized advocate for cultural justice, Jeff co-founded CultureStr/ke (now the Center for Cultural Power) and the Webby-nominated May 19th Project. He led the Butterfly Lab for Immigrant Narrative Strategy and the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University.

Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i of Chinese and Kanaka Maoli descent, he is a graduate of ‘Iolani School, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at Los Angeles.