Tuesday, October 7, 2025 at 7:00 PM
Skylight Books, Los Angeles
 **A cultural biography, both sweeping and intimate, of the legend Bruce Lee, set against the extraordinary, untold story of the rise of Asian America—from the author of the award-winning classic _Can’t Stop Won’t Stop_ and one of the finest culture observers of our era.** 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, became a bridge to people and cultures from the East, and just as he was set to conquer Hollywood once and for all, he died of cerebral edema at age thirty-two. It’s no wonder that Bruce Lee’s legend has only bloomed in the decades since. Yet, in so many ways, the legend has eclipsed the man. 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, where he embraced West Coast counterculture and meshed it with the Asian worldviews and philosophies that reared him. Forgotten is the man whose very presence broke barriers and helped shape the idea of what being an Asian in America is, at the very dawn of Asian America. _Water Mirror Echo_—a title inspired by Bruce Lee’s own way of moving, being and responding to the world—is a page-turning and powerful reminder. At the helm is Jeff Chang, the award-winning author of _Can’t Stop Won’t Stop_, whose writing on culture, politics, the arts and music have made him one of the most acclaimed and distinctive voices of our time. In his hands, Bruce Lee’s story brims with authenticity. Now, based on in-depth interviews with Lee’s closest intimates, thousands of newly available personal documents, and featuring dozens of gorgeous photographs from the family’s archive, Chang achieves the nearly impossible. He reveals the man behind the enduring iconography and stirringly shows Lee’s growing fame ushering in something that’s turned out to be even more enduring: the creation of Asian America. **Jeff Chang’s** first book, _Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation,_ was named one of the best American nonfiction books of the last quarter century. He has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature and, among numerous other honors, has won the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award. Chang has written three other acclaimed bestsellers on American history and culture, music, and the arts. In May 2019, he and director Bao Nguyen created a four-episode digital series adaptation of his award-winning book _We Gon’ Be Alright_ for PBS Indie Lens Storycast. Chang was featured in Nguyen’s ESPN Bruce Lee documentary, _Be Water_; the PBS series, _Asian Americans_; and Lisa Ling’s CNN series, _This Is Life_. **JEFF YANG** has been observing, exploring, and writing about the Asian American community for over thirty years. He launched one of the first Asian American national magazines, A. Magazine, in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, and now writes for The Guardian and Washington Post and can be heard regularly as part of NPR’s culture critic panel on Pop Culture Happy Hour. Among his bestselling books are Jackie Chan’s bestselling memoir I Am Jackie Chan; Once Upon a Time in China; and Eastern Standard Time, and most recently the New York Times bestselling RISE (cowritten with Phil Yu and Philip Wang) and The Golden Screen: The Movies That Made Asian America. He’s currently writing a reimagined Monkey King graphic novel for the new prestige publisher The Lab and working with screen legend James Hong on Hong's forthcoming memoir, due out from Simon & Schuster in 2026. His first movie as screenwriter, A Great Divide, can currently be seen on Amazon Video, and the first season of the food journey show he developed and sold along with his son, actor Hudson Yang, Crash Course Cuisine, can now be seen on Hulu and NatGeo. He lives in Los Angeles. **PHIL YU** is a writer, speaker, and the founder and editor of the influential Asian American news and culture blog Angry Asian Man. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Silicon Valley, he studied radio, TV, and film at Northwestern University before creating the blog in 2001, which has become a leading voice in Asian American media and activism. Yu's commentary, known for mixing humor with criticism, has been featured in major publications like The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and others. He is coauthor, with Jeff Yang and Philip Wang, of the bestselling book RISE: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now, and was the recipient of the 2023 Peabody Award. He lives in Los Angeles and is also an executive producer of the web series Awesome Asian Bad Guys and has appeared in the documentary Linsanity.