← Back to discovery

Interior Chinatown

Charles Yu

2020288 pagesabout 4–7 hours
2020
first published
  • 2020Pantheon Books · 288 pagesISBN 9780307907196

**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.

How it reads

Content notes

  • Racismmoderateunreviewed

Quotesnone available

How do you feel?