Interior Chinatown - Charles Yu

⭐ 8.5/10

(Originally written by Magdalene)

This book is WEIRD, but in a really cool way. It's presented as a script, but you still get paragraphs of info for backstory and things like that. The main character is Willis Wu, who is an actor trying to make it big, which to him means getting cast as Kung Fu Guy, but the best he has been able to get so far is Generic Asian Man. He has a bit part in a police procedural called Black and White that is shot in a stereotypical Chinese restaurant, and the Asian people always die, and the Asian characters always have to speak in accents, even though they don't have one. Above the restaurant are apartments where all the extras live, but it's also just a restaurant and homes, representing the universal Chinatowns that exist all over the world.

So it's normal life, but also a TV show (?), sending the message that we all just follow the stereotypes and can't break out of the roles that were given to us. It was very confusing to me at the beginning, wondering WHAT was real (is everyone in his family an actor??), but then I realized that everything is symbols and metaphors and allegory! So I just went with it. It's mostly about the entertainment system and the erasure of Asian people, but also how Asians face systemic oppression and racism, and family bonds, and stereotypes, and realizing how we've put limitations on ourselves by accepting our expected roles.

I loved what he did with this book, but also I wish it hadn't taken me quite as long to figure out what was going on. I'm sure I could read this again and again, and get something different out of it every time.