Other Books: Interior Chinatown, by Charles Yu- 4 Stars, AAPI Reading

[Joi]

What a unique and original book. Written as a screenplay, this is a largely a satire- and uses it's format to make larger social commentary on Asian American representation in Hollywood (and in general). We see life through 'Generic Asian Man' Willis Wu- both his struggles becoming a Kung Fu Guy, his upbringing in the industry, and his personal life.

This book had some amazing themes, and greater commentary on the Asian American Experience. I felt the screenplay worked so well 90% of the time. I loved the contrast and push and pull of trying to "break out" of the Generic Asian Man role, while still acknowledging that this still perpetuates the stereotypes and boxes he is pushed in to. This has both eye-roll interactions (the satire is REAL), but also showed more meaningful relationships and struggles- his mother in flashbacks, and later on his future family.

The whole book is practically written in a giant over-arching metaphor of a screenplay. So smartly done. It's funny. It's dark. It's depressing. But at the core, it still is about hope and heart. Parts are hard to read because of the stark and blunt discussion of violence against Asian Americans. Some parts are hard to read because it hit all the feels as an Asian person.

"The real history of Asian people in America. Two hundred years of being perpetual foreigners"

[Meli]

Glad you liked this!

You mentioned the format worked 90% of the time, what parts didn't work for you?
I am curious because there were a couple of specific scenes where it didn't work for me - maybe "work for me" isn't the right way to put it, but took me out of the story a bit - so I want to see if it was the same scenes for you.

[Joi]

In very vague words- I felt a lot of the "best" or more memorable moments were the monologues. AKA when it was just when it was a BLOCK OF TEXT in the book, I felt like the heart the book was often getting interrupted by the script/screenplay commentary or directions. Often times the format seemed repetitive as well, although that could have been a literary device done on purpose for the reader to feel that way.

[Meli]

I think members in my book club mentioned the same thing... particularly Willis' monologue at court.

I guess this author writes for TV, most notably Westworld which I thought was pretty cool.

[Joi]

Oh interesting, I thought it was largely successful as a screenplay- and also a good device to get people talking about his book, what worked, even what didn't. Lot's of hype and talk about this book. It definitely made me think about not only the text and the words in the book- but more behind the scenes of why the author chose to make things play out like they did, and why he chose to use the format, more about the author's process-which I don't always think about.

I watched the first season of Westworld, and loved it. Never picked it back up because I felt it deserved a rewatch before continuing.