My Alphabetical Biography List: Lee, Bruce, martial artist and actor
"The Bruce Lee Stoy," by Linda Lee
It took me a long time to get around to 'L.' I could not decide who to do. I knew I had too many white Americans and Europeans on my list, so Bruce Lee crossed my mind, but I also had too many recent people, and I wanted to expand my horizons. In scoping out the library website I found Li Ao, a Chinese philosopher from around 800AD, so I got his biography out of the library. Oh goodness. Maybe if I knew some of his philosophy it would've made sense, but this book assumed you already knew about him, so it was just confusing and boring. So I started looking at other Li's. Unfortunately for everyone else the books were either so-an-so's poetry (not a biography) or in Chinese (which doesn't work so well for me). Still resisting Bruce Lee, every couple months I would look at the library website again and get nowhere. After over a year, though, I finally decided I needed to get on with this, so I settled on him (because apparently, didder, we had books on him after all).
Bruce Lee was born Lee Jun Fan in San Francisco in 1940. His parents were there as his father was touring with the Cantonese Opera Company. They returned to Hong Kong in 1941, which then is where Bruce grew up. He started learning Kung Fu in his early teens to help him out in fights with other boys. Later he would take various components from other types of martial arts, as well as boxing and fencing, to create his own version, which he called Jeet Kune Do.
This was a man extremely dedicated to his art. It consumed every aspect of his life; his physical regimen, his work, his reading and writing (both of which he did a lot of), his thought process. He was crazy intense and it was exhausting just reading about him. His wife said, however, that while it may have seemed to everyone else that martial arts came before everything else, family did actually come first. It was hard to see that, though, even in a book that she herself had written. I did get a sense, however, that he loved her and depended on her, and that he loved his children as well. Just don't ask me to marry someone like that.
It took me a long time to get around to 'L.' I could not decide who to do. I knew I had too many white Americans and Europeans on my list, so Bruce Lee crossed my mind, but I also had too many recent people, and I wanted to expand my horizons. In scoping out the library website I found Li Ao, a Chinese philosopher from around 800AD, so I got his biography out of the library. Oh goodness. Maybe if I knew some of his philosophy it would've made sense, but this book assumed you already knew about him, so it was just confusing and boring. So I started looking at other Li's. Unfortunately for everyone else the books were either so-an-so's poetry (not a biography) or in Chinese (which doesn't work so well for me). Still resisting Bruce Lee, every couple months I would look at the library website again and get nowhere. After over a year, though, I finally decided I needed to get on with this, so I settled on him (because apparently, didder, we had books on him after all).
Bruce Lee was born Lee Jun Fan in San Francisco in 1940. His parents were there as his father was touring with the Cantonese Opera Company. They returned to Hong Kong in 1941, which then is where Bruce grew up. He started learning Kung Fu in his early teens to help him out in fights with other boys. Later he would take various components from other types of martial arts, as well as boxing and fencing, to create his own version, which he called Jeet Kune Do.
This was a man extremely dedicated to his art. It consumed every aspect of his life; his physical regimen, his work, his reading and writing (both of which he did a lot of), his thought process. He was crazy intense and it was exhausting just reading about him. His wife said, however, that while it may have seemed to everyone else that martial arts came before everything else, family did actually come first. It was hard to see that, though, even in a book that she herself had written. I did get a sense, however, that he loved her and depended on her, and that he loved his children as well. Just don't ask me to marry someone like that.
posted by melilotnfosco | 11:11 AM
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