Interior Chinatown

“You’re here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.”

“This is it. The root of it all. The real history of yellow people in America. Two hundred years of being perpetual foreigners.”

While growing up in L.A.'s Chinatown, Willis Wu has dreamed about being Kung Fu Guy. His wishes begin to come true when he is offered a role on a TV police show, although he quickly realizes he is still playing Generic Asian Man, the same role he plays in every day life. This inventive, whip-smart novel caught me by surprise. It is presented as a screenplay and appears deceptively simple but it slowly reveals the difficulties and prevalent racism that continue to show more plague Asian Americans, as they try to build a life in America. This will make a perfect companion piece with Minor Feelings, an excellent essay collection I recently read. show less

I am rendered nearly speechless by how good this is. It is endlessly creative, an anti-racist suckerpunch, a love letter to those who have come before, and a wagged finger to anyone who thinks racism is less limiting (though it is admittedly less deadly) when you are one of the "good" minorities. Last year I wrote a pretty negative review of a book called Such a Fun Age. that book attempted to bring to the page some low-key racism and a GR friend, a woman of color, got pretty angry about my pan, saying it was the only time she had seen microaggressions well represented in fiction and clearly I missed "the point." I respect her opinion and said so, but I did not back down from my own opinion. In my opinion that book was straight up show more poorly written. I am glad she felt seen by that book, but the important issues raised in that book deserved a much better writer. Also, notwithstanding the comment of that GR friend, other books have better addressed the impact of microaggressions, but few (none?) have done so as well as this book.

All of this makes the book sound pretty heavy, and it is, but this book is also hilarious. I laughed spontaneously and from the gut many times. Much of that humor has a real bitterness, but the story is so filled with sweetness it never feels like a rueful gripefest. The characters, though confined by labels like "generic Asian man" and "dead Asian man number 2" are incredibly sensitively and fully drawn, even the characters who don't get a speaking role. Another thing that does not bring down the whole is the wildly experimental, often metaphysical, structure. Sometimes when I read modern fiction the story gets lost in unique telling, but not so here. This is a story with a giant heart, there is so much love for family and friends, for the buildings created by some white guy based on his idea of what China looks like, for the neighborhood, and even for television industry (even as it reduces everything and everyone around Wu to generic types.)

The whole of this book is just so damn good, I don't know what to say about it. This is about as viscerally excited as I can ever get by reading. I sort of pity the author that follows. show less

This year's National Book Award Winner was an unusually structured novel which told the narrative of Willis Wu who struggles to become something more than the Ordinary Asian bit actor in the popular show called Black and White. The story is written as a screen play, setting the scenes as if providing the actors with background and direction. It's an original idea and one that obviously captured the attention of the judges for this year's prize . Throughout the story the readers are provided a detailed look at the forgettable life of the Asian American, cast into roles where if they are killed off in a script, they need to wait the formulated 45 days, death days, before they can return to another role.
"I know, Will. I know. I wish it show more didn’t have to be like this, but you know how it is. You’re an Asian Man. Your story was great, while it lasted, but now it’s done. I hope our paths cross again. Maybe somewhere else."
Yu does manage to provide a great portrait of the Wu family, his parent's immigration, his brother's success, and his relationship with a another actress who can pass for bit parts as a representative of many countries:
"You’re like a magical creature. A chameleon.” “Able to pass in any situation as may be required,” she says. “I get it all. Brazilian, Filipina, Mediterranean, Eurasian. Or just a really tan White girl with exotic-looking eyes. Everywhere I go, people think I’m one of them. They want to claim me for their tribe.” “Must be amazing.” “Yeah, I mean, I can be objectified by men of all races.”
His parents have gotten older and the once great Kung Fu master, his father Sifu, is now reduced to working in the restaurant at the ground floor of the SRO apartments where his family lives. "Sifu had gotten this old without anyone noticing. Including your mother—deemed to have aged out of Asian Seductress, no longer Girl with the Almond Eyes, now Old Asian Woman—living down the hall, their marriage having entered its own dusky phase, bound for eternity but separate in life."
On karaoke nights, (one of my favorite scenes) his father sings John Denver's Country Roads: "by the time he’s done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who’s been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home."
I have to admit that by summarizing the novel and reflecting on the lines I highlighted, I liked the book even more. I would be interested in reading some of his earlier work and find out about his ideas in his contribution to the HBO show Westworld.

Lines:

Sifu had gotten this old without anyone noticing. Including your mother—deemed to have aged out of Asian Seductress, no longer Girl with the Almond Eyes, now Old Asian Woman—living down the hall, their marriage having entered its own dusky phase, bound for eternity but separate in life.

Bruce Lee proved too much. He was a living, breathing video game boss-level, a human cheat code, an idealized avatar of Asian-ness and awesomeness permanently set on Expert difficulty. Not a man so much as a personification, not a mortal so much as a deity on loan to you and your kind for a fixed period of time. A flame that burned for all yellow to understand, however briefly, what perfection was like.

There’s just something about Asians that makes reality a little too real, overcomplicates the clarity, the duality, the clean elegance of BLACK and WHITE, the proven template and so the decision is made not in some overarching conspiracy to exclude Asians but because it’s just easier to keep it how we have it.

MILES TURNER, 33. Tall and built. Really built. Like, if-gray-T-shirts-hadn’t-been-invented-already-they-would-have-to-be-invented-just-so-Miles-could-wear-the-shit-out-of-them built. That kind of built.

by the time he’s done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who’s been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.

I know, Will. I know. I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but you know how it is. You’re an Asian Man. Your story was great, while it lasted, but now it’s done. I hope our paths cross again. Maybe somewhere else.

There are a few years when you make almost all of your important memories. And then you spend the next few decades reliving them.

The words coming out of your mouth, you can feel it happening, how you’re softening, changing into a different person. You were a bit player in the world of Black and White, but here and now, in her world, you’re more. Not the star of the show, something better. The star’s dad. Somehow you were lucky enough to end up in her story.

That despite all of that, you somehow feel that your oppression, because it does not include the original American sin—of slavery—that it will never add up to something equivalent.

He is guilty, Your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of the jury. Guilty of wanting to be part of something that never wanted him.

We’re trapped as guest stars in a small ghetto on a very special episode. Minor characters locked into a story that doesn’t quite know what to do with us. After two centuries here, why are we still not Americans? Why do we keep falling out of the story? show less

The Short of It:

The use of satire in this novel is very effective in highlighting Asian American stereotypes and the immigrant experience. Funny, honest but also a little sad.

The Rest of It:

Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award so it’s been getting plenty of attention and I will say that it’s much deserved. You need to know going in that it’s satire and told completely in script format. Hence the title, Interior Chinatown, which is how many scripts begin. Interior, exterior, you get the gist.

Willis Wu has one dream. He wants to be “Kung Fu Guy”. If you’ve ever watched a TV show or movie where Asian American actors are included, you know this guy. He’s the guy that shows up, cleans house with his martial arts show more skills and has a lot of close-ups. He’s also the guy who ends up with the pretty woman. But Willis Wu is always:

Asian Guy Making a Strange Face
Asian Delivery Driver
Generic Asian Man #1, #2, #3
Dead Asian Guy

These roles are played by Willis both in real life and in a TV show called Black and White. His desire to be “Kung Fu Guy” eclipses all things, including his family. He constantly struggles to have enough to eat and yet he’s a good guy and cares for his elderly neighbors in the run down building he lives in by offering a bit of meat to them now and then.

He shows up to work. Does what he is told but through his observant eyes he continually yearns to be “that” person, the person he is not. Plus, his own mother and father lived similar lives. At first the pretty or handsome Asian and then later Old Asian Woman or Man.

There is a very blurred line in this novel between what is happening or what we think is happening. Is it real life or a TV show? Or both? I grew up with a father who cared little about me or his family but cared a lot about Bruce Lee. This infatuation with Lee is also found in this novel. He was bigger than life. He was the one Asian to be. His fame crossed many continents and he married an American school teacher but look at the tragedy that was his life. As you know, his son Brandon also died tragically and on set to boot.

Have you seen the movie Once Upon a Time In Hollywood? There is an actor who portrays Lee at the height of his career. The scene received much criticism for perpetuating Asian stereotypes. Even after Lee’s success in Hollywood, the stereotypes continued. Few movies cast Asian American actors without including a stereotype to go with it.

Interior Chinatown, with its script format and humorous tone will keep you reading and you will chuckle here and there. Yu has a sense of humor but if you sit with it for awhile, you will also note the longing the main character feels and how difficult is is for an immigrant family to make a home for themselves in this country. The story is well-written and balanced. I highly recommend it. show less

So good, but so painful to read. It surprises me how many reviewers describe this as a funny book; if it’s funny, it’s in a very ironic and dark way. Protagonist Willis Wu is Generic Asian Man, and the novel is written as a screenplay to emphasize how it’s about the roles Asian Americans (and ultimately everyone) are forced into playing and then eventually internalize. Generic Asian Man is always a bit part in the ongoing police drama Black and White, and his dream is to advance to Kung Fu Guy. When he finally does, he realizes that his part is still as precarious as it’s always been.
Yu writes the best acknowledgments, in the style of the book itself.

Willis Wu has always been Generic Asian Man in the set happening in interior Chinatown, the cop drama Black and White constantly in production. He dreams of moving to bit parts in the shadow to becoming Kung Fu Guy, the highest attainable job for him, but it becomes more and more difficult for him to fit into this narrative.

Playfully using the format of a screenplay and making the reader work to tease out reality and the "show", Yu shows how racism in America has made Asian Americans - Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, and more - a generic "other", and how that could play out when internalized. The screenplay really cleverly makes you realize how ridiculous our stereotypical roles in movies have played out to give us a generic Asian man or show more exotic Asian woman, instead of recognizing the wide variety of experiences and personalities of individuals. It's a fast read and incredibly thought-provoking. I have a hunch I would get even more out of it on a reread. show less

Rarely is a small book so generous with the truth all wrapped in a velvet glove of humor. It would be a mistake to be put off by its format - we are all, after all, the writers, directors, and actors in our own movies. Rewarding in every aspect - satire, social commentary, coming of age, love story, Hollywood send-up. Recommended.