A Review of Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown (Knopf Doubleday, 2020)
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ljiang28
Written by Stephen Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
Anything written by Charles Yu is always going to be a treat, so I was super excited to be able to get to read Interior Chinatown (Knopf Doubleday, 2020) as part of a larger reading group. The experience proved to be quite stimulating because I came away from the discussion having a much greater appreciation of the text, which I already found compelling. Let’s let the marketing description give us some key information: “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.” I don’t know if I would agree that the novel is Yu’s “most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet,” because this kind of statement puts his last novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, into a subordinate position, which it definitely does not deserve. In any case, on the formal level, I did find the novel to be quite rich. Yu toggles between playscript and realism to showcase the struggles that Willis Wu endures as an actor and as an Asian American man. The transitions between representation as showcased by various television shows and associated dramatic scripts in contrast to what is “real” is the blurry boundary that Yu wants to mine in this particular novel. What is “interior Chinatown,” a space of authenticity that moves beyond the tired stereotypes that Asian Americans attempt to escape. For Yu, the most “interior” space, if we might call it that, is none other than the poverty that is associated with the immigrant experience. It is the Chinatown that exists beyond the noir films that populate the Hollywood imaginary and beyond the foods that we commonly associate with such ethnic spaces. Yu’s novel thus operates via tactical juxtapositions: the cramped spaces that exist alongside the stereotypes, the hunger that consumes alongside the marginalization of the Asian American actor. For me, the novel achieves its richest dimensions in a conversation with engaged readers, so I hope you get the opportunity to read this wonderful book and then have someone to discuss it with. This work is another important addition to the corpus of Asian American literatures.
Buy the Book Here
comments
ljiang28
Written by Stephen Sohn
Edited by Lina Jiang
Anything written by Charles Yu is always going to be a treat, so I was super excited to be able to get to read Interior Chinatown (Knopf Doubleday, 2020) as part of a larger reading group. The experience proved to be quite stimulating because I came away from the discussion having a much greater appreciation of the text, which I already found compelling. Let’s let the marketing description give us some key information: “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.” I don’t know if I would agree that the novel is Yu’s “most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet,” because this kind of statement puts his last novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, into a subordinate position, which it definitely does not deserve. In any case, on the formal level, I did find the novel to be quite rich. Yu toggles between playscript and realism to showcase the struggles that Willis Wu endures as an actor and as an Asian American man. The transitions between representation as showcased by various television shows and associated dramatic scripts in contrast to what is “real” is the blurry boundary that Yu wants to mine in this particular novel. What is “interior Chinatown,” a space of authenticity that moves beyond the tired stereotypes that Asian Americans attempt to escape. For Yu, the most “interior” space, if we might call it that, is none other than the poverty that is associated with the immigrant experience. It is the Chinatown that exists beyond the noir films that populate the Hollywood imaginary and beyond the foods that we commonly associate with such ethnic spaces. Yu’s novel thus operates via tactical juxtapositions: the cramped spaces that exist alongside the stereotypes, the hunger that consumes alongside the marginalization of the Asian American actor. For me, the novel achieves its richest dimensions in a conversation with engaged readers, so I hope you get the opportunity to read this wonderful book and then have someone to discuss it with. This work is another important addition to the corpus of Asian American literatures.
Buy the Book Here
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