Talking with the author of the 2025 non-fiction graphic novel–

Who Smashed Hollywood Barriers with Gung Fu?: Bruce Lee

PLUGO: Teresa, I was wondering if you could give us a short introduction of yourself and your journey as an author?

Teresa 何 Robeson: Oh, dang. So okay, I was born in Hong Kong, and that is a large part of my connection to the Bruce Lee story, I grew up there until I was 8, when my family immigrated to Canada. I spent the rest of my formative years in Canada until I met my husband. We were both attending University of British Columbia, and then got married, he’s American. So I moved to the States after that.

My mother had always thought that I should become an artist and or writer, and so I said, No, no, thank you. I’m going to do something else. And how did that pan out, Teresa? Not wel. Okay., mother was right. Eventually, after my husband and I were married, he was going to grad school, and I was doing office jobs which were so incredibly boring and mind-numbingly dull that I started taking classes on how to write.

I’ve always loved children’s literature, I was probably the only 20 something year old I knew who still read picture books by myself. I thought I should write children’s literature. So I took some courses on that and I just started writing for kids’ magazines, doing poetry and short stories and stuff.

By 2010 I wanted to write books, whereas before I always thought I just don’t have books in me. But I started writing books and got an agent, lost an agent, went for a couple of years without an agent, got another agent and sold my debut book, Queen of Physics, and then sold another. Then, in the course of having my second agent, she found a call out for people to to write graphic novels through the Penguin workshop program. Penguin does the Who is/Who was, series of books, and they were starting the graphic novel line.

So my agent said to me, “Hey, want to try writing graphic novels?” And I said, “Heck, yeah!” Because you always say Yes, yes, yes; you have to. And so I just started studying  books on how to make comics, graphic novel and stuff. The two biographical, graphic novels that I wrote are on the Dalai Lama, Who is Tibet’s exiled Leader, and then the Bruce Lee one Who smashed Hollywood barriers with Gung Fu.

Book Review: You can find my review of this book on PLUGOarts.com

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PLUGO: You mentioned that this book got picked up for the Scholastic Book Fair –

Teresa 何 Robeson: It’s actually penguin, penguin, random house. The scholastic thing is awesome because it’s not actually part of scholastic, but for scholastic to pick up your book to have in their book Fairs and Book club flyers. That’s a really big deal, and my editor is just thrilled.

PLUGO: Okay, so it’s Penguin who does the Who is series. 

Teresa 何 Robeson: Yeah. They are more like middle grade books, not picture books. They’re middle grade level. And now these are middle grade biographical, graphic novels. 

PLUGO: But you have some familiarity with comics, because if I understand correctly, while you were growing up in Hong Kong, you were coming across what we would call in the US something the Jade Man style comics of that time. Is that so?

Teresa 何 Robeson: Yes, yes, absolutely.I read most of that. I think it wasn’t, you know, my unique experience. Most kids in Hong Kong grow up reading lots of those, you know, comic books and comic book style, graphic novels, just various kinds. Some are in magazines, some are their own thing.

You know. How can I explain it? So some are like the manga stories, where it’s like a story contained in the book, and others are more like, you know, Peanuts, comic strips, a whole bunch of them bound together, or, you know, in the newspaper. And so, yeah, they were just prevalent, adults read them. In fact, one of the comic strip collection type things – Lahuti is so popular it was actually made into a television show, too.

PLUGO: That’s the thing in the US. People have a very skewed view of comics. They associated it only with superheroes until just recently, and then slightly less recently, if people were not thinking superhero comics, they’re thinking Manga from Japan. But you have to be bit of a comic aficionado, to know that there are these other kinds of comics and comic genres out there. 

Another example being the comic industry in India, which is so full of a lot of the Hindu deities and their adventures. But in places like Hong Kong and Taiwan, the Wuxia or Kung Fu style comics which featured a lot of martial arts and the journeys of martial artists, in one way shape or form.

Having grown up in Hong Kong you must have known who Bruce Lee was to some degree?

Teresa 何 Robeson: Yeah, to some degree. And my dad actually knew who he was because he saw him in passing, my dad also took Kung fu lessons as a child, and then as a young man pre-marriage.

So he knew of Bruce, he actually knew Bruce Lee’s sifu and so yeah, he kind of, you know, hung out in that crowd a little bit. When we were little, my sister and I, my dad tried to teach us Kung Fu because well, we were in Canada by then, and he also thought that was a good way for us to learn self-defense against bullies, and people like that. So yeah.

PLUGO: Really! So that would make your dad part of the Wulin, the Kung Fu Forest. So there are those interconnections by virtue of that kind of one or two degree separation.

So now that we’ve segue into discussing Brece Lee’s Sifu Ip Man, have you seen any of the movies based on him?

Teresa 何 Robeson: The Donnie Yen one? Yeah, yeah, that was good. I liked that movie.

PLUGO: Did you see the one where he fights. Mike Tyson?

Teresa 何 Robeson: Has there been more than one? Because I just saw the 1st one.

PLUGO: I think it’s a trilogy, or there might have even been a 4th one, but in the 3rd one he fights Mike Tyson.

Teresa 何 Robeson: Oh, that’s hilarious! A lot of what’s it called? liberties being taken.

PLUGO: Oh, no, I’m sure that was perfectly, historically accurate, right?

Teresa 何 Robeson: We just never knew Mike Tyson was that old. Hilarious.

PLUGO: Let’s let’s flash forward a little bit. You’ve moved from Hong Kong to Canada, and I know a lot of people in the US associate the West Coast, San Francisco, and maybe Seattle with the martial arts community. But I think a lot of people overlook the reality that there’s a huge, formidable Asian diaspora in Canada, as well. 

Teresa 何 Robeson: Absolutely.

PLUGO: How was that for you? Were there any notable martial arts experiences that you encountered during that period of your life?

Teresa 何 Robeson: Aside from my father. No. My father is, you know, a little bit of a know it all. So you know, he thought, well, I learned Kung Fu in Hong Kong with the greats. So why would I expose you to any other kind when I can teach you at home? 

PLUGO: That’s a unique thing. It’s almost like the yin and yang of martial arts. Right? There’s the closed door type of school, where masters are very selective of who they teach and how much of their teaching are put on display. Then there’s the open door policy, which once again, Bruce Lee was pivotal in throwing doors open to make Chinese martial arts accessible to a much wider population. Contrary to popular belief, there were some other of Bruce’s contemporaries who had a similar belief in that level of openness.

But, for whatever popularity Kung Fu has, it would not have had as much without the work that Bruce Lee did.

Teresa 何 Robeson: Absolutely. Yep, I agree.

PLUGO: Here’s the question. Were you aware of that going into the project of writing this graphic novel? Or was that something that you kind of discovered? I mean, the title says a lot. Who Smashed Hollywood barriers with Gong Fu.

How familiar were you with that phenomenon?

Teresa 何 Robeson: Not.

PLUGO: Okay.

Teresa 何 Robeson: Yeah, so not deeply familiar. I mean, I kind of knew it at the back of my mind. I knew you know, his being a co-star in the green hornet was a huge thing, but aside from that, I have to say, you know, I didn’t know a ton about him in his life. I’ve seen his movies, and you know, just like superficial knowledge about him. So it wasn’t until I got into the project and did a bunch of research that I knew more about it. 

So how we work on these things is it’s kind of like an intellectual property project. Penguin comes up to you with a list of people. I got to choose who I wanted to write about. So that’s why I chose the Dalai Lama and Bruce Lee, but then they give you some leeway as to where to focus on a particular person, because it’s only 64 pages, you know.

PLUGO: it’s a small book

Teresa 何 Robeson: The graphic novel can’t cover the entirety of a person’s life. You wouldn’t be able to do it justice. So what they wanted to do was focus on a pivotal period of the person’s life. And for Bruce Lee, even before I did a ton of research on him, because I had to write a short proposal first. I knew I wanted to highlight the point where he became a big thing in Hollywood and introduced Kung Fu to a wider audience, you know, all over the US. 

So I knew that I wanted to focus on that going in. And it’s funny because I started writing a bunch before and a little bit after. But the editor is like, No, No! Keep narrowing. Keep narrowing. So it takes place not too long before he started getting noticed.

Part of the problem with working on so many book projects at the same time is when you finish one, and this one is finished because it’s like printed and stuff. Is that once you’re done with one, you put all that information out of your head so that you can concentrate on the next project. I’m working on like 4 or 5 other projects right now.

 So it’s like, Okay, what was it about for sleep again? But anyway.

She got me to really narrow it down. So it’s just shortly before he got the co-starring role as Kato. And then, just shortly after, when the series was canceled. So it really narrows it down. But it’s really good. I think it’s perfect that they gave me the go ahead to focus on the period of time in his life when he, just became a big star.

END OF PART ONE

Part 2 will be published here next week.