Interior Chinatown: A Novel›Customer reviews
A 2020 National Book Award Winner
"One of the funniest books of the year...a delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire." (The Washington Post)
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. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but he is always 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. At least that’s what he has been told, time and time again. Except by one person, his mother. Who says to him: Be more.
Playful but heartfelt, a send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes, Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterly novel yet.
"Fresh and beautiful...Interior Chinatown represents yet another stellar destination in the journey of a sui generis author of seemingly limitless skill and ambition." (The New York Times Book Review)
Listening Length 4 hours and 20 minutes
Author Charles Yu
Narrator Joel de la Fuente
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date 28 January 2020
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4.2 out of 5 stars
4.2 out of 5
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Interior Chinatown: A Novel
Interior Chinatown: A Novel
byCharles Yu
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1,597 global ratings | 71 global reviews
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There are 0 reviews and 13 ratings from Australia
From other countries
June Malmer
1.0 out of 5 stars A waste of money and time
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 January 2021
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Don't understand why this book has so many unused pages and spaces . Expected much much better from writer , what a let down .
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Neil Sharkey
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 December 2020
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Fantastically executed, heartfelt, somehow irreverent and important simultaneously. Easily my favourite book this year and while I suspect it’s a bit Marmite (as they say round here) you should definitely give it a go.
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FM
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Reviewed in Germany on 29 January 2021
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Brilliant, dark and funny. This is a great read and confronts attitudes towards Chinese immigration / Chinese Americans in the USA that are also relevant in other former British colonies.
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ellen d
5.0 out of 5 stars It's a great story that is full of twists and turns. An emotional roller coaster.
Reviewed in Germany on 11 January 2021
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The story line transformed me into another dimension of conciousness
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Andres R. Guevara
5.0 out of 5 stars Stunning, Powerful, Funny, and Important
Reviewed in the United States on 3 February 2020
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It is only February and I have already read one of the best books of the year. Interior Chinatown is full of wow moments and it tells its story brilliantly weaving in and out of screenplays and set pieces, telling several related stories to discuss identity, race, and what it means to be an American. Although I am not Asian (I am Latino), the themes in this book sing to me and also challenge how I look at all people including Asian Americans and their unique role in this country. What a wonderful book whose ideas I will long cherish. Please read this book. Absolutely loved this book.
99 people found this helpful
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Al
1.0 out of 5 stars Very disappointing
Reviewed in the United States on 30 November 2020
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It's probably best to read books before they win awards, or better yet, not know that a book is critically acclaimed. So I began reading with great expectations. I grew up Chinese American and I found the whole ‘generic Asian guy’ stuff both self-evident and, as it's picked up across the book, predictable and repetitive.. The mixed genre of screenplay, stream of consciousness, narrative, and stand-up quips and asides didn't gel for this reader. This may be others’ cup of tea but I didn't really pick up any new insights or flashes on being 'the Asian guy' in the room or much else. There's a half century of cool Asian-American writing on this stuff that's worth reading and I'm not sure what's added here.
39 people found this helpful
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KasaC
5.0 out of 5 stars Important Reading Disguised as Entertainment
Reviewed in the United States on 1 March 2020
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Not only was this a fun book to read with its mashup of styles (most notably, shooting script plus narrative), it was also heartfelt and eyeopening in its depiction of a Generic Asian Man who is seeking his identity in a world that doesn't recognize him as an individual. Interior Chinatown presents his quest in a most remarkable and original way.
Ironically, all the characters are so well defined and depicted, I'd recognize any one of them if they walked in the door. Charles Yu's experiences on-set have provided him with a greater knowledge of that milieu than most, and given him insight in how to construct and present his message of living under racism with all its noxious layers, and perceptions, particularly of Asian men, in this, the supposed promised land. Highly recommended for multiple reasons.
42 people found this helpful
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S. Yoshida
5.0 out of 5 stars The Self-Fulfilling Prejudice
Reviewed in the United States on 9 November 2020
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Interior Chinatown is a creative exhibition of Yu’s analytical and writing skills, and exposition of social identity. At first, the book was not easy to follow because of the unconventional narrative style. But as I turned the pages the story became clearer. Yu’s literary stream-of-consciousness carried me into the SROs of Chinatown and the lives of its residents. My mind flowed through theirs. I drifted past glimpses of Hong Kong and Taiwan, the struggles of new immigrants in America, and the continuing efforts of their descendants to thrive. I empathized with many scenes in this story because my grandparents were field laborers on Hawai’i’s sugar plantations and I was born on a plantation. Among all of this was the universal theme of a mother encouraging her son to be more.
Years ago, I wrote on a website that being an Asian-American felt like standing in a minefield where every landmine was a stereotype. No matter what direction I took, a stereotype waited for me because there were so many of them. They were so numerous that people could use one stereotype to justify another or apply contradictory stereotypes to the same person. The person gets caught in this web of stereotypes. It’s not about who you are, but about what you represent to someone’s mind. And stereotypes can live on in the minds of people long after the real world has moved on. And they can be weaponized.
Stereotyping can insidiously limit people’s growth because of prejudices toward that person or group. They might be excluded from the types of education, employment, social interactions, or patience that could have improved their life situations, and allowed them to reach their personal goals and contribute to the larger community. Instead, the absence of progress reinforces the belief that they do not have the potential to better themselves. Defeated, the stereotyped person may succumb and become the stereotype. This circular trap is the self-fulfilling prejudice.
Luckily, my mom told me to do better.
Here on the "mainland," for the past 40 years, some of the stereotypes that I had to rise above included:
bad driver, dog-eater, misogynist, not assertive enough, threatening, bait-eater, economic predator, inscrutable, not a real American, will not fight back, worker bee, over-educated, asexual, lascivious, cannot write in English, over-represented, no people skills, foreign, clever, diseased, dishonest, sneaky, and the model minority.
And in my Amazon review of Mismatch by Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr, I wrote about a law professor’s revelation on the over-represented status of Asians-Americans.
And I recall that after raising the topic of racism with a few people, I got responses such as:
1) you’re making things up (i.e., dishonest),
2) you don’t understand (i.e., ?), and
3) you have no right to complain because you’re not supposed to be here (i.e., foreign).
I’m still here, doing better.
27 people found this helpful
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Ryan
5.0 out of 5 stars A Novel as a Screenplay
Reviewed in the United States on 21 June 2020
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Willis Wu dreams of achieving the pinnacle of Asian American actor success: kung fu guy. Living in a single room occupancy apartment in Chinatown above a Chinese restaurant, above his parents, with an eclectic group of neighbors. He has worked his way up the ladder from dead body, to background parts, to special guest star. But Willis aspires to be someone more. He works on a show called Black & White which stars two cops, one black, one white, where he is in the background. One day he finds himself in the spotlight and he must determine which direction his life will take.
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Interior Chinatown is an adventurous novel that shows the otherness of the Asian experience through a literal screenplay. The story is straightforward but the book itself is structured as a screenplay. The writing, the format, even the font lean heavily into the screenplay theme. The dialogue and scene descriptions are written as they would be for a movie or film. The chapters are broken into acts. The font is Courier 12 pt, the standard typewriter monospace font that all screenplays use. In the novel, the author uses tropes and clichés to show Willis’s interaction with the world, a background character brought to the forefront.
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I loved this book. I really enjoyed the cleverness of the structure, and the whimsy of the use of tropes. This book is funny and witty and has a lot of love for its main character, who doesn’t get a lot of love in mainstream American stories. This book touches on themes of otherness, family, success which are specific to Asian Americans but many can find themselves in these characters. If you’re looking for fun, enjoyable read, check out this novel from Pantheon Books published on January 28, 2020. ★★★★★ • Hardcover • Fiction • Purchased online. ◾︎
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29 people found this helpful
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Lee A. Makela
4.0 out of 5 stars Moving Beyond Generic
Reviewed in the United States on 9 April 2020
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Intermixing fantasy and fact, fiction and history, the specific and the general, INTERIOR CHINATOWN: A NOVEL allows the reader to experience something of the self-generated whirl of influences shaping (in this case) Generic Asian Man and limiting his willingness to move beyond his self-accepted stereotypical role.
The somewhat self-depreciating humor, the shifts in point-of-view requiring “you” to experience Willis Wu’s experience of the world, and the novel’s video script presentation style all contribute a welcomed fresh take on an important issue coloring human interactions in the United States. Highly recommended and a reading pleasure.
20 people found this helpful
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