Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
A review of Charles Yu’s novel Interior Chinatown.
“Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy. You are still not Kung Fu Guy.”
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (2020). Published by Pantheon Books.
Like many other things in my life, I procrastinated reading this book for the longest while. Is it because I have a fear of the NYC Manhattan Chinatown, due to a crappy guy I dated and his entire family living and working there? Perhaps, that fear of somehow running into him or one of his loved ones, triggering all of my trauma from that relationship, will always be present. Yes, I’ve spoken to a therapist about this, do not be too concerned for me.
Anyways! I had bought this on Kindle when it was on sale—I think I only paid $7 for it? I thought that was a pretty sweet deal, so I went for it. And then I just never read it. Until now!
I’ve heard so much about this book for the longest time and I literally knew nothing about it (I didn’t even read the book blurb or an excerpt!), so I dove right in head first. My only expectation was that this better prove to me why it won the National Book Award—perhaps that’s too high of an expectation?
These are my post-reading thoughts. Enough with the rambling!
Book Blurb
From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes 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 a protagonist even in his own life: he's merely Generic Asian Man. 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 highest aspiration he can imagine for a Chinatown denizen. 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, and what that means for him, in today's America.
Playful but heartfelt, a send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes—Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu's most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.
Content
Our main character, Willis Wu, despite being narrated in second person, is an extra on a show about a white cop and a black cop. He is the diverse extra, as in this show world, only white and black really matter.
The Latina character is described as a floating head, so I guess that means she just exists? Poor Willis though, his biggest dream that’s reiterated about is that he wants to be THE Kung Fu Guy. Not Kung Fu Kid. Not Generic Asian. Nor does he want to be Sifu, who has fallen from glory and can no longer pick up the rotting pear under his table. Kung Fu Guy is the dream, like the Bruce Lee he worships.
But, unfortunately, he is condemned to play a stereotypical Chinese character, despite not even being mainland Chinese himself. He lives in a Chinatown SRO (single-rent only, for the uniformed like me who needed to Google this) where literally everyone embodies a stereotype and is feeding into this Hollywood dream of what Asians are supposed to be. Spoiler-not-spoiler: in this expectation, literally every Asian is mainland Chinese. Asia is a monolith.
I thought this screenplay format that Yu uses is brilliant, because it’s making a statement about who is playing a character within a character and who isn’t. Sifu, who was once so proud and mighty, pretends that he isn’t ready to keel over any minute.
The Big Brother figure, the Asian guy who has quote-on-quote made it, fakes knowing Korean with his curses and drinks better than the locals in Koreatown. Literally everyone in this novel is playing a character of some sort, whether they consciously acknowledge it or not.
Willis, in his actual life, is the Generic Asian Man, and he doesn’t even realize it at first. This is a very satirized novel, quite sardonic, and you can’t take some of it seriously at time because it’s out there. But the sad thing is that it’s completely based off of reality. This isn’t groundbreaking, new content, and if it is to you, it’s time to stick your head out from under a rock and open your eyes unfortunately.
I also think this is a book you need to revisit again and again, to dig deeper into the nuances of it, since it is taking a more humorous approach to some really serious topics.
I literally cannot stop thinking about Sifu and his situation, although it is introduced early on in the book. SPOILER: this man is old, he can’t even bend over, and apparently he gets his food from trash cans because he can’t even afford non-dollar store sale cookies. That’s so, so sad and a shockingly explicit descriptions of how elders are treated in America.
Writing
I was seriously unprepared for how experimental this novel is—seriously. I didn’t expect the screenplay format to be incorporated into the formatting of the narrative itself, nor did I anticipate how it is actually written in second person.
The second person throws me off a bit, but that’s just because I find it to be such a jarring form of a narrative tool but also very commanding, and I absolutely loved the screenplay format as a wannabe screenwriter and playwright. I think it was such a wonderful framework tool, especially with incorporating in the stereotypes of Asians throughout American cinematic history, because that adds so much depth and layers that if you know you know.
This book will make your brain hurt because of its formatting however, and it reads really quickly, so you might miss a few things because of it. Just reread it.
Overall Thoughts
I think this is an important book for people to read, especially if they’re like ostriches with their heads in the sand and know nothing about how Asian-Americans are reduced to a monolith in media, as well as the treatment of Chinese-Americans in the United States. It’s witty, it’s humorous, and it’s a quick read because of the quick pacing. I find screenplays easy to read and because this novel is formatted exactly like one, it flows quite well. All in all, I recommend it!
