Interior Chinatown: A Novel (National Book Award Winner) (Vintage Contemporaries)

I had really wanted to like this book more than I did. I really enjoyed what the book was trying to get at and the message that it was going for. I have often complained bitterly about the lack of Asian representation in media and Hollywood, and this book really resonated with me on that level. There were quite a few moments in the novel where I was like "YES THIS!" because a specific passage or section was something I super related to.

Still, I guess I'm just not really someone who likes reading experimental fiction, because the screenplay format in which the book was written really made me feel separate from the characters. I couldn't get invested in them because I never felt like I got to know them very well, meaning that I really didn't care what happened to them. Towards the end, I also started getting very confused about what was actually happening, or if it was all actually happening, or if it was just in the context of another screenplay/show, especially as things became more and more fantastical and strange.

This could have been much more effective for me if it had been written about the main character in a non-screenplay format where I could have really connected better with him. As it was, it sort of felt like watching one of those flip book animations where I could see the characters moving, but not very smoothly. Not a lot happened for a while, and then a ton happened all in one go, and that just pulled me out of the story completely.

So I guess 4/5 for the content, but 2/5 for delivery.

Biting satire about being a person of Asian descent in America. Funny. Nicely staged audio which was well read by Fuentes

Charles Yu has presents us a novel that at its core, is an effort to identify, challenge, and rewrite stereotypes. It’s told using a unique and refreshing voice that captures the immigrant experience. Even more so, it tells the minority experience as a whole. A life of constantly grasping for an identity that is not your own just so you can be seen. The author goes a layer deeper and adds in the complex dynamics between generations. Relationships made even more fluid by the compounding pressures of western cultural mores. The people we celebrate are diminished before our eyes when we step outside. Everything you work for and achieve has an asterisk next to it to signify achievements by “the other.” Through our narrator we also get a cynical behind the scenes commentary on the mundane aspects of the entertainment industry. Particularly how the industry exasperates stereotypes. Overall a short and swift story that is rich in details and texture. Yu puts on a writer’s clinic in how careful word selection and pacing paints a complete picture by deploying the reader’s imagination.

273 pages From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes 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 a protagonist even in his own life: he's merely Generic Asian Man. 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 highest aspiration he can imagine for a Chinatown denizen. 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, and what that means for him, in today's America. Playful but heartfelt, a send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes—Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu's most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.