Black Dragon: Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination

by Zachary F. Price

In Black Afro Asian Performance and the Martial Arts Imagination , Zachary F. Price illuminates martial arts as a site of knowledge exchange between Black, Asian, and Asian American people and cultures to offer new insights into the relationships among these historically marginalized groups. Drawing on case studies that include Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s appearance in Bruce Lee’s film Game of Death , Ron van Clief and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Chinese American saxophonist Fred Ho, Price argues that the regular blending and borrowing between their distinct cultural heritages is healing rather than appropriative. His analyses of performance, power, and identity within this cultural fusion demonstrate how, historically, urban working-class Black men have developed community and practiced self-care through the contested adoption of Asian martial arts practice. By directing his analysis to this rich but heretofore understudied vein of American cultural exchange, Price not only broadens the scholarship around sites of empowerment via such exchanges but also offers a compelling example of nonessentialist emancipation for the twenty-first century.

240 pages, Hardcover

Published January 10, 2022

Reviews

[Book Reviewer]

I picked this up expecting a book about martial arts. Somewhere along the way, I realized it was really asking a much bigger question about how cultures influence one another without fitting neatly into the categories we usually impose on them.

One chapter would have been enough to convince me the book was worth reading, but what impressed me was how each example built on the last. Seeing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bruce Lee alongside the Black Panther Party, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Fred Ho could have felt scattered in another author's hands. Instead, the connections gradually became clearer, and I started noticing the same themes resurfacing in completely different places.

What I appreciated most was that Price never treats cultural exchange as something simple. The book acknowledges the tensions around borrowing and identity without getting trapped in easy conclusions. I came away feeling that the conversations themselves were more interesting than any single answer.

I also enjoyed how performance remains at the center of the discussion. Whether the stage is a film, a concert, or a martial arts demonstration, the book keeps asking what these performances communicate about solidarity, masculinity, resistance, and belonging. Those questions lingered with me long after I put the book down.

This is one of those books that made me want to revisit things I thought I already knew. I found myself looking at old films, listening to familiar music, and recognizing connections I probably would have missed before reading it. To me, that is one of the best compliments I can give a work of cultural criticism.