Book Review: Interior Chinatown

Written by: Suri Desai

When I first read the title for Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, I was a little unsure of what exactly I was going to be reading. I picked it up, and did something I normally would have never done when reading a book for the first time: flip through the pages to see what they looked like. Inside, I didn’t find the typical narrative structure for a book, but rather, I found something I had never seen in something that actually had the subtitle a novel underneath a title: a screenplay. 

Willis Wu, the protagonist of the novel, doesn’t possess the main-character syndrome of many main characters, but rather sees himself as a background character in his own life. Willis works as a “Generic Asian Man” on a police procedural show dubbed Black and White, and dreams of making it to the highest position possible for an Asian man: Kung Fu Guy. However, as Willis climbs the ranks on the tv show, he begins to question his own identity and viewpoint of the world. Wu not only provides an alternative take on what a novel can be, but also provides excerpts from the sociologist Erving Goffman’s work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life to provide the reader with clues to Willis’s dilemma with his identity.

I would recommend this novel to anyone, but I would especially suggest it to those looking for a different narrative structure, humor and/or identity. Willis’ dilemma may be with feeling like a “stereotypical” Asian-American man, but his dissatisfaction with his role in life is truly relatable for all people. Interior Chinatown is many things, but if I had to sum it up quickly, it’s a story about a people’s struggle to become real Americans, sparking a story that is humorous, tragic and hopeful at the same time. No question, 5/5 stars. Read it, and who knows, maybe like Willis (and me) your perspective on identity might just change.