REVIEW:

Setting: Interior Chinatown

Character #1: Generic Asian Man

Time: Present Day (sadly)

What a clever, clever book this is! Charles Yu’s award-winning 2020 novel is a lean, mean, satire machine, packing a punch (or karate chop, as he’d probably write with a wink) in a mere 288 pages. It’s written in the form of a TV screenplay, which creates a very meta rumination on life imitating art imitating life.

The protagonist, Willis Wu, is an extra for a crime procedural called “Black & White” (think “Law & Order”), living his life on and off the screen as Background Oriental Male. If he dares to dream, he hopes to one day work his way up to Delivery Guy, then maybe, just maybe, Kung Fu Guy. But only if he remembers to do the accent.

While the screenplay structure and in-your-face stereotypes may not work for some, the techniques are certainly thought-provoking. All the world’s a stage as they say, and we are merely players. Interior Chinatown puts the typecasting of those in the AAPI community in the spotlight and asks its audience to see Asian Americans as people rather than props. I hope many readers will decide to tune in to this message.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.

Willis Wu doesn't perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he's merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Yet every day, he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. He's a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy - the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Or is it?

After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he's ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration - Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu's most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.