Interior Chinatown

 By Charles Yu

Pantheon     2020

288 pages      Literary 

I must say at the outset of this post that Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu is the best book I have read in 2021. And I am not alone in thinking that. Yu won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, so my vote for best book is in good company.

And with that, let me tell you a bit about the plot. As the book opens, Willis Wu is a first generation American living in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, where his parents settled after they left Taiwan. They have all taken roles in movies and television as “Generic Asian” man and woman, and right now they appear as part of the cast of a TV cop show called “Black and White,” which takes place in and around a Chinese restaurant called The Golden Palace. Family members as well as other bit players on the show live above the restaurant in single room occupancies (sro). Most of them have lived in these rooms for many years. Willis was raised there. He has worked his way up the bit player in the television show roster: from “background Oriental male” to “dead Asian man” to “generic Asian man number three/delivery guy.” What he really wants to be is the “Kung Fu Guy,” so when he becomes “Kung Fu Guy” toward the end of the book, it is a major plot surprise.

The novel is bitingly humorous while at the same time hauntingly potent. For example, the  recruiter for the show responds to Willis when he seeks an audition for a speaking part. The recruiter says, “No one really wants to hire you. It’s your accent.” Willis replies, “I don’t have an accent.” The recruiter: “Exactly. It’s weird.” So Willis learns to have an accent. The most poignant scene for me occurred when Willis’ father, “Old Asian man,” sings “Take me home, country roads” at the restaurant’s karaoke night, and there are tears in everyone’s eyes, because everyone wants to go home. There is an intense undercurrent of anger and sadness amidst the screenplay. The reader doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

As I was reading the book, I pondered the way in which we categorize the different varieties of immigrants we see in our community—the Asians running the restaurants, the Middle Easterners’ who run the convenience stores, the Indian owners of the motels, and on and on. As I watched television, I watched closely for “background Asians.” I saw many in the commercials that came on. Even during  a speech during the Virginia governor’s race, three people stood in the background of the Republican candidate: a white man, a woman, and an Asian man. “Background Asian man” for sure. The New York Times reviewer mentions: “Yu explores in devastating (and darkly hilarious) fashion Hollywood’s penchant for promoting clichés about Asians and Asian-Americans.”

I had little prior knowledge about Interior Chinatown before I began reading, so the format was a huge surprise and very confusing at first. Please be aware of the format as you begin reading. At book club last night, most of these veteran readers expressed some difficulty figuring out the format, the print size, and most of all, they had questions about the dialogue. Was the dialogue part of the tv show script or the characters speaking as themselves?

I would suggest that you take the challenge of reading this book. It will change some of the ways you view the world. 

Here is an incredible article about Charles Yu, the author, in the New York Times. It explains so much.

Dovetails in Tall Grass

By Samantha Specks

Spark Press     2021

310 pages     Historical Fiction

The Shortlist

This summer I was privileged to read several books about relationships between native peoples and white Americans in Minnesota. They included This Tender Land and Lightning Strike by William Kent Krueger and also Dovetails in Tall Grass, by Samantha Specks. One of the troubling things that I have learned is that I was never taught anything about the Dakota Wars or anything about the treatment of Native Americans as Minnesota was being established and settled.

I learned nothing about any of this in any history class I took as a young person. However, I was very aware of native reservations  that were prevalent in the Minnesota of my childhood. It seems ironic that I was so troubled when we all learned about the destruction of the “Black Wall Street” and the death of African Americans in 1918 Tulsa, Oklahoma, while I knew nothing about the thirty-eight Dakota men who were hung in 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota. ”To this day, this is the largest mass execution in United States history.” An article on Minnesota Public Radio discusses why the topic is not taught in Minnesota schools.

Specks does a remarkable job of telling the story of the Dakota Wars through the lens of two teenage girls, Emma Heard, the daughter of settlers in New Ulm, Minnesota, and Oenikika, the daughter of Chief Little Crow. I was particularly taken by Oenikika. She knew that she was born to be a healer. She notices the pull of the plants as she walks in the prairie: “My soul was listening as much as my ears. I was sensing it again—their pull. The plants of healing whispered through the rustling grasses.” Reminded me so much of Robin Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass. Emma thinks that she is called to be a teacher. Both are remarkable young women and great witnesses to the conflict that emerges.

This is a beautifully-written witness to Minnesota during the Civil War, the Dakota Wars, as well as an eloquent observation of teenage girls of any generation.

 Here is the Kirkus review. Samantha Specks website.