In his acclaimed 2005 debut, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop, Jeff Chang chronicled hip-hop as a cultural force that reshaped the world. In his similarly masterful new book, Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America, Chang focuses on the martial arts icon who’s both a global inspiration and an enduring enigma.
The author is determined to change that latter part—and decidedly does. Water Mirror Echo draws from extensive interviews and primary sources, and brims with curiosity and reverence as the author leads readers through Lee’s extraordinary life: from his 1940 birth in San Francisco; to his years in Hong Kong and America, where he fought to become a star rather than a stereotype; to his death just 32 days before the 1973 premiere of his blockbuster Enter the Dragon. Afterwards, Lee “became an idea for each of us to imbibe, molded to the shape of all our lives like spirits to a cask, felt at the scale of history.”
Water Mirror Echo convincingly, compellingly transforms Lee from heroic idea to an unforgettable man central to Asian American history. Indeed, Chang explains, “By seeing Bruce Lee we can better understand Asian America. By seeing Asian America we can better understand Bruce Lee.”