Minor characters locked into a story that doesn’t quite know what to do with us. We’re trapped as guest stars in a small ghetto on a very special episode. If they’re lucky, they’ll be given some throwaway lines in the scenes starring Black & White. In Chinatown, this is the ultimate dream for young men who will otherwise be relegated to background characters. Willis has lived his whole life in Chinatown, dreaming of one day being Kung Fu Guy. Charles Yu uses film tropes and a screenplay style on the page to tell the story of Willis Wu. Interior Chinatown represents yet another stellar destination in the journey of a sui generis author of seemingly limitless skill and ambition.When it comes to a book like Interior Chinatown where the author is creating something so unique and different, I’m able to forgive a lot even when there are other weaknesses in the work.
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. Or is it?Īfter 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. 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. 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.
Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. A delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire.” -The Washington Postįrom the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.
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