Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America by Charles Russo (review)

In 1959, martial arts star Bruce Lee returned to San Francisco, the city of his birth, from Hong Kong, marking the beginning of a new era of martial arts in America. His return also heralded a shift in the culture of the Chinese American community. Charles Russo's book Striking Distance: Bruce Lee and the Dawn of Martial Arts in America details the early history of Bruce Lee's career in San Francisco and the history of Chinese martial arts in the Bay Area. Through extensive and detailed interviews with many leading figures in the Bay Area's martial arts scene of the 1960s, Russo explores the history and racial dynamics of the Chinese American community. In examining the early era of martial arts in America, Russo provides insight into the complex racial dynamic of the Bay Area's Chinese community, one that Lee influenced and challenged like no other.

Russo prefaces his examination into the culture of San Francisco's Chinatown with a thorough overview of the history of Chinese immigration and martial arts. The San Francisco gold rush brought many Chinese immigrants to the Bay Area. However, with growing animosity toward the immigrant population, the federal government enacted the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, stopping the immigration of Chinese people. This form of racial discrimination surrounding the Chinese community in San Francisco frames the remainder of Russo's book. He develops the argument that issues of race within Chinatown were caused by both the discriminatory laws and the old codes of racial segregation within the Chinatown community.

Bruce Lee did not fit into the established martial arts scene in San Francisco when he arrived in 1959. Lee, only a teenager, displayed self-confidence to the point of arrogance, a trait commonly understood to be reserved only for grand masters. He also believed in practicality over flash and tradition while teaching martial arts. This was interpreted as a direct insult toward much of the San Francisco martial arts scene. Lastly, being of mixed raced, Lee had suffered from racial discrimination during his adolescence in Hong Kong, leading to his disregarding the old code of racial segregation that many in the Bay Area held firmly.

Lee encountered a diverse group of martial artists within the Bay Area who held a similar philosophy. Russo's interviews with members of this developing new Oakland martial arts scene provide first-hand insight into an emerging culture of martial arts in America, shaped in particular by a complex racial dynamic, a recurring point of emphasis for Russo. Many of the established martial arts masters in Chinatown refused to teach non-Chinese, arguing that those who did would betray their heritage. Russo summarizes this racializing contestation by drawing a parallel between the policy of exclusion and the code of segregation. Exclusion and segregation mirrored one another for nearly a century and, in unison, began to diminish in importance from the mid-1960s onward.

Truth rarely matters in martial arts, as any story associated with legend is often more important than reality. In meeting this challenge of negotiating fact and fiction, Russo's study must be praised. The author acknowledges this difficultly throughout the book and masterfully locates truth within folklore. Even within events of the last fifty years, the line between fact and fiction in martial arts is fluid. However, due to Russo's thorough research, he is able to present an objective reality of the Bay Area's complex martial arts scene and its history.

Having said this, it should be mentioned that Striking Distance is not primarily the history of Bruce Lee, although Russo still outlines his first six years in America. Russo ultimately offers the story of Chinese martial arts and race in America. In this focus, Russo does a superb job detailing the complexities and intersectionalities of race and martial arts in the tight-knit Chinese community of the...