Quote

My mother still calls me Jim and that is about it. Everyone else calls me Lee. My wife calls me whatever.

If you ask most high schoolers who Bruce Lee is, they will say that it someone they sit next to in English class.

So, I've never been politically correct, even before that term was available to us, and I have really identified with other people who don't want to be read as just a black poet, or just a woman poet, or just someone who represents a cause, an anti-Vietnam war poet.

Even now, most people call me Joy or Joe Lee or Joey. It's all fine with me. The only time I correct them is when they refer to me as Spike Lee's sister.

My father was a big Bruce Lee fan. He's Chinese-Hawaiian, and my mother is Chinese. He used to take us to all these really fantastical films with martial arts in them.

In the black culture, certain kids are given nicknames that they roll with forever; the nicknames outweigh their real names. I'm one of those scenarios.

Bruce Lee was the first star I idolized. Growing up as a Chinese American, there weren't many people like me on the big screen.

My father was a big Bruce Lee fan. He's Chinese-Hawaiian, and my mother is Chinese. He used to take us to all these really fantastical films with martial arts in them. And Bruce Lee was amazing.

When I was growing up, my white friends would call me: 'Hey, Chief!' Even when I go to work now, people call me 'Chief.'

And I used to say, 'I'm black, too.' In other words, I - my whole life I've been called a half-breed, a convict, king of the trailer trash, this and that. I take that and stand.