Interior Chinatown
Charles Yu · 2020 · 288 pages
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Some book links are affiliate links; you pay the same price and we may earn a small commission.
About this book
**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 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.
Appears in these reading paths
National Book Award Winners: Where to Start with the Fiction Winners
Related reading guides
Reader reviews
Ratings and notes from readers — tagged with how deep into the subject they were.
Loading reviews…