The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In

by Paisley Rekdal

"Witty, original, and authentic. A fresh,
young Chinese-American voice."
--Adeline Yen Mah,
author of Falling Leaves

As the daughter of a Chinese-American mother and a Norwegian father, Paisley Rekdal grew up wondering where she fit in. The essays in this, her shimmering nonfiction debut, tackle thorny issues--race and identity politics, interracial desire, what it means to be a "hyphenated American"--with a fresh, feisty, and very funny new perspective.

Rekdal's family history is, as she describes it, "complicated and vaguely dangerous," and at the center of this strange world is her mother--a smart, stubborn, complex woman who adores her daughter. Rekdal exposes the foibles of family, friends, and lovers, but never spares herself, capturing both global and personal struggles with a critical, compassionate and humorous lens. The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee flows effortlessly from stunning cultural observation to a recollection of an embarrassing travel anecdote. Her destinations vary widely--a classroom in South Korea, a Japanese family's living room, Main Street in Natchez, Mississippi, a Taipei shopping mall, a beach in the Philippines, and even her own bedroom. In each, she explores the vast differences between cultures, the feeling of being an outsider, the constant battle to understand and be understood.

The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee proves that shifting the frames of identity can be tricky, exhilarating--and revelatory.

Genres: Memoir, Essays, Nonfiction, Asian American, Short Stories, Biography

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Rekdal grew up in Seattle, Washington, the daughter of a Chinese American mother and a Norwegian father. She earned a BA from the University of Washington, an MA from the University of Toronto Centre for Medieval Studies, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of the poetry collections A Crash of Rhinos (2000), Six Girls Without Pants (2002), and The Invention of the Kaleidoscope (2007) as well as the book of essays The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee: Observations on Not Fitting In (2000).

In reviewing The Invention of the Kaleidoscope for Barn Owl Review, Jay Robinson observed that it’s “the razor’s edge that always accompanies eros that makes the poems of Paisley Rekdal fresh, intense and ultimately irresistible.” Rekdal’s work grapples with issues of race, sexuality, myth, and identity while often referencing contemporary culture.

Rekdal has been honored with a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, a Village Voice Writers on the Verge Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship to South Korea. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, including Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (2006) and the 2010 Pushcart Prize Anthology.

Rekdal teaches at the University of Utah.

Reviews

[Joyce Pavao · Rating 5 out of 5]

great fun identity book

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A series of essays as this young women works to define and find herself. A lot of self examination and honesty. She talks about herself at home in Seattle, in S. Korea, in Japan and in the US . Her view of the South matches my own prejudices.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my Asian American Autobiography seminar. Rekdal's prose is crisp, poetic, and haunting. The essays can stand alone yet still work well together. A few flaws: she clearly keeps the reader at a distance and doesn't really explore her identity struggles/emotions in depth. I would still recommend it.

[Ms. G · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liked the cover, the title and the price--$1 at thrift store. Something kept me reading this book--perhaps it's ease and to some extent the topic--inter-racial issues--but I was disappointed in all of the above.. just sort of dull.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid collection of essays - I'd be interested in reading more of her autobiographical stories.

[Lindsey Spadoni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I totally relate to so many of the stories in this book from my experiences in Thailand. This book inspired me to continue writing my own story.

[Marie Charron · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s hard to pin down why this was so hard for me to finish. It was written in 2000, and was strangely tone-deaf from the perspective of 2021. I was happy to read about the author’s personal experience with otherness, but any time she wrote about other people in her orbit it was incredibly cringey and uncomfortable. There was one essay in particular about a black girl that she went to elementary school with that I honestly couldn’t believe had been published as it was.

Also, the author was in her 30s when she wrote the memoir, and most of her meditations on race and other-ness were told through the lens of her world travels, so there was a discordant clash between naivety, privilege, and dissatisfaction. There’s something specifically ridiculous about a young person writing about their long, dusty bus ride to a vacation destination as a representation of a real struggle. It reads as true from them, but embarrassingly out of touch from the perspective of the reader.

ALSO, I don’t know that she really had anything to say! There was a lot of rambling meditations on how her family members (mother, grandmother, great aunt) might have felt and why, but it was all conjecture and weirdly navel-gaze-ey.

I think it’s hard to write a memoir in essays. There are very few who do it well. This is not an example of someone who does it well.

[Charlotte Piwowar · Rating 5 out of 5]

With witty and engaging prose, "The Night My Mother Met Bruce Lee" is an incredible reflection on racial identity. Each chapter jumps to a different moment in the author's life, and so feels like a collection of memories, with each one connected through the theme of "not fitting in," as the title suggests. Even though it jumps through in this non-linear fashion, the author keeps it all together through that common thread, and includes a few concluding thoughts about what it means to be mixed race, and to have people (including yourself) question what your racial identity is. I would recommend this book to anyone...even if the theme of racial identity does not necessarily resonate, the recurring notions of finding oneself and navigating questions of self certainly will.

[Bryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Rekdal's poetry, but this essay collection is not doing it for me -- it is very flat, monotone, everything grey and grim, but even more than all of that, it feels so much like a product of a particular school of writing. I don't find anything personal in the pieces, no spark, nothing catches fire, which is a very large contrast to her intense, colourful, passionate poetry. I wonder if she wrote these essays now if they would have that same sense of flatness to them? I was about to write 'controlled' but that is just it, these do not feel like they are controlling anything, but like all the joy has been squeezed out of them.

(Gave up on this 8/29/2017)

[Pamela J · Rating 4 out of 5]

A frank exploration from Rekdal that not only ponders who am I? but what am I? Daughter of Americans but when one parent, still US- born, is of Chinese descent and the daughter appears Chinese and not-Chinese, the writer shares her reflections on identity across various culturally distinct spaces. Part travel narrative, Rekdal shares her insights about herself and others expectations for her from Taiwan and Korea to Mississippi.

[Leslie McNamara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read about a mixed race woman somehow searching for her ethnic identity. The books is filled with snippets of memories and adventures, not always in the same era. The author seems angry much of the time, but perhaps comes to terms with herself at the end.

[Richard Wisp · Rating 3 out of 5]

Liked because these sentences feel almost directed to me personally,and that is a plus since I don't communicate too good.
Let it be said Bruce was honestly a great guy to be with,tho rather difficult.You were better off to do your own thing,tho Ruby Chow has her opinion, I have mine.

[ishika · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Shin Yu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The essays in this collection are meditations upon race and identity that arise from Redkal's travels abroad in Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and the Phillipines. As the child of a bi-racial marriage, the author sticks out whether in Asia or in the U.S. The author confronts stereotypes and biases amongst her agemates in Japan who insist on her "Americanness" despite having a Chinese mother who speaks Chinese - they are simply unable to conceive of a person as being both, or more than one thing. In Korea, she is referred to by her teaching peers as a "hermaphrodite" (tomboy), where she teaches Korean school girls English and learns of Korean beauty standards and perceptions of femininity. My favorite essays in this book are Rekdal's essay on going to the Phillipines to track down a fictional tribal group, which she weaves together with a war-time narrative about her grandfather's drycleaning business which he supposedly acquired from a Japanese-American neighbor who was to be interned. Rekdal's Gung Gung builds it into a successful business with multiple locations and when his neighbor returns to Seattle decades later, her grandfather turns the business back over in his generosity. Or so the story that Rekdal's mother goes.

The last essay in this collection is an interesting foray into root-searching, which is closer to home (in locale certainly, but also in any investigation that actually yields information, vs. self-reflection) then the author's peregrinations to Asia. She travels to the American South in search of evidence of her great aunt's history and evidence of her presence in a tiny Mississippi town.

Some readers may find this essay collection self-indulgent and rife with navel-gazing, understandably so, however, the author does have moments of interesting and insightful observations on identity - even if they are within the limited context of her own experience and life. Her search feels authentic and her willingness to look critically at her own life, perceptions and behaviors (awful scene in a train station en route to Tibet where she plays out the Ugly American stereotype; her own misgivings about being in an interracial relationship where she may or may not be a fetishized object of affection) and flawed understandings compelled me enough to trust in her as a narrator and to follow her through her journeys.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I could say I enjoyed this book more than I did. I had read some of Paisley Rekdal's poetry books and was interested in reading this mainly because of her time spent in South Korea, which I can identify with having studied abroad there. And to a degree, I enjoyed reading her reflections on Korea and could smile at some our similar experiences, but I felt like overall she had a very negative and paranoid view of everything that was happening around her, and after a while I felt frustrated with that. It felt like she looks for the negative in everything that happens, particularly in her connection with China and the Chinese. And it seemed in almost all of her reflections on her interactions with others, she was being rude or unkind to someone.
Perhaps the book was hard to connect with because I am a four-centuries American and have never had that struggle to know my identity. While I can't give an accurate comment on what that must be like, I wish Rekdal could see the best of both worlds instead of always seeming to view her mixed race as something to complain about.
With that said, Rekdal has a lovely way with words and with juxtaposing two seemingly unrelated things to make a strong point. The essays in this book are a bit like her long poems in her books of poetry, which I liked. I just wish I could have enjoyed the book as a whole better than I did.

[Alexis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't know if this is one of the best books I have ever read, but it definitely got me thinking and comes to mind often. Rekdal is the daughter of a Chinese mother and a white European father. Although she is half Chinese, she looks more like her father. One of the most interesting stories is about the trip she took with her mother to China. Another interesting story is about an experience as an exchange student in Japan. The work explores important questions about race and identity. What does Asian American mean when you are in Asia?

[Tina]

I wish I could give this three and a half stars—though, in fairness, it has been a couple of years since I read it. It's a beautiful, fascinating, insightful work that I think off often. But somehow it just didn't coalesce into quite the whole it seemed to want to be... Definitely a worthy read, however.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intelligent, probing essays in which Rekdal muses about "not fitting in," as a young biracial woman, in both Asian societies (Japan, Korea, Taiwan) and at home in Seattle. Rekdal's writing is vibrant and supple -- as are the relationships she describes.

[Margaret Fast · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would give it 3.5; my default rating. Writes well and often evocative. But choppy; overly long descriptions; not sure where she's going with the book other than obsessing over her race. Does not appear to be a particularly nice person. Pretty self involved.

[Tara Outman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found the writing style and insights largely uneven though beautiful at times. Although frequent chapter breaks make for easy reading, the book would be served by a more structured organizing principle. Though this is memoir, Rekdal has the voice of a fiction writer with room to grow.

[Diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took waaaaaaaaaaaay too long to read this book. I think I had about 50 pages to go when I had to return it to the library. I was never motivated to try to go back and check it out again.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

prefer her poetry over her prose

[Cindy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Disappointing read. I'd hoped for a memoir but this was a collection of essays.

[Richard T. Wisp]

I thought the world of Bruce.