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.