CBH Talk | Two Dragons in Hollywood: Bruce Lee, Anna May Wong, and the Past and Future of Asian American Representation
This program is offered in partnership with the Asian American Arts Alliance and the Sunset Park Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
Join acclaimed biographers Jeff Chang (Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America) and Katie Gee Salisbury (Not Your China Doll: The Wild and Shimmering Life of Anna May Wong) for a timely and powerful conversation about two iconic trailblazers who redefined what it meant to be Asian American in the reels and in real life. From Hollywood’s golden age to the birth of martial arts cinema and into the age of Asian America, Anna May Wong and Bruce Lee fought to claim their stories—and helped shape the ongoing struggle for visibility, pride, and power in popular culture.
Moderated by Ed Park, Pulitzer Prize finalist and author of Same Bed, Different Dreams, this event explores the legacy of these stars, the barriers they broke, and how their influence still reverberates in today’s Asian American “renaissance.”
Photo of Bruce Lee courtesy of the Bruce Lee Family Archive
Participants
Jeff Chang is a writer, podcaster, and a cultural organizer. His newest book is Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America, released in September 2025. His book, Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, was named one of the best U.S. nonfiction books of the last quarter century. He has also written Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post Civil Rights America, and We Gon' Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation. He was a Lucas Artist Fellow and has received the American Book Award, the Asian American Literary Award, and the USA Ford Fellowship in Literature. He is the host of the Signal award-winning podcast, Edge of Reason, and of Notes From the Edge, produced by KALW Public Media. Photo of Jeff Chang by Jeremy Keith Villaluz
Katie Gee Salisbury is the author of Not Your China Doll, a new biography of Anna May Wong, the first Asian American movie star. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Believer, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship in 2021 and gave the TED Talk “As American as Chop Suey.” She also writes the newsletter Half-Caste Woman. A fifth-generation Chinese American who hails from Southern California, she now lives in Brooklyn. Photo of Katie Gee Salisbury by Jmar Teran
Ed Park is the author of the novels Same Bed Different Dreams (2023), a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Personal Days (2008), a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. His fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, The Atlantic, Bookforum, McSweeney’s, and many other publications. He is a founding editor of The Believer and the former literary editor of The Village Voice, and has worked in newspapers and book publishing. Born in Buffalo, Ed lives in Manhattan with his family. He currently teaches writing at Princeton University. His debut story collection, An Oral History of Atlantis, was published on July 29, 2025. Photo of Ed Park by Beowulf Sheehan
About the Asian American Arts Alliance
The Asian American Arts Alliance is dedicated to strengthening Asian American artists and cultural groups through resource sharing, promotion, and community building.
