INTERIOR CHINATOWN (2020)
By Charles Yu
Pantheon Books, 271 pages.
★★★★★
Charles Yu won the National Book Award for Interior Chinatown, an honor well deserved. This book is many things: a tragedy, a black comedy, a love story, a script, a family saga, a character study, an extended metaphor, and an imaginative work that blurs fiction and reality. Somewhat controversially, it’s also a backdoor poke at the Black Lives Matter movement in that it communicates complaints from yellow, red, brown, working class, and female Americans collectively crying out, “What about us?”
Lest you think the last remark insensitive, consider Yu’s novelistic device. He follows the trials, temporary triumphs, and return to travail of Willis Wu, a Chinese-American actor who eventually lands bit roles and a short-lived part in a TV series titled Black and White. It’s one of those ubiquitous shows/movies/plays in which a white and black character are thrown together, crack denigrating jokes, and eventually discover their common humanity. Think as you wish about the premises of such productions; Yu’s goal is to remind us that Asians are often dumped into stereotypical baskets. His character grew up in San Francisco’s Chinatown and both of his parents were also actors. Willis details the kind of roles they performed, a veritable stock character sampler whose labels say it all: Generic Asian Man, Pretty Oriental Flower, Background Oriental Man, Young Dragon Lady, Waiter, Old Asian Woman, Wizened Chinese Man, Kung Fu Master…. The last of these, in Wu’s mind, is the ultimate status, a shorthand for saying the character is respected and feared. He longs to become “Kung Fu Guy.”
The author trades in stereotypes for the purpose of shedding light on them. Yu divides his novel into seven “acts,” as much of the book is written as if it were script material from Black and White, a show in which those of other hues are either invisible or exist only to accentuate the show’s title—as if America is biracial rather than multiracial. It’s all very confusing for Willis, who only knows he’s “yellow” when someone points it out to him. It becomes even more baffling when his actress girlfriend (and later, wife) Karen Lee gets the same treatment, though she is staggeringly beautiful and appears ethnically ambiguous. It’s not a reveal to say that all of this serves to undermine the most enduring Asian stereotype, the “model minority.” It would be difficult to be a harder worker than Willis, but worldly success is another matter.
As in many novels, Yu gives us a multivalent title. That is, his “interior” Chinatown can be understood as a geographical location, a set of historical circumstances, a locus of memory, mental baggage, and a ball and chain he can’t loosen. It’s no wonder that Willis has a love/hate relationship with Chinatown. It’s a place where his ethnicity is accepted, but if he accepts it in return, he can’t be fully “American.” Imagine the burden and imagine again the toll it could exact.
Actually, you don’t have to; Yu’s tale will spell it out for you. He’ll even offer some easy-to-digest sociological theory to add depth. Yu peppers his work with quotes from Erving Goffman (1922-82), a symbolic interactionist scholar who studied rituals, social dramaturgy, and signs long before they became fashionable. Goffman’s appearance signals (if I might!) that among the things that dazzled the National Book Award committee is that Yu’s book doesn’t fit snuggly into conventional fiction pigeonholes. As noted above, some of it is written as script material from Black and White, but it’s also peppered with quotes, court case material, and invented-but-rings-true dialogue. Overall, it reads as a template for what stream of consciousness writing ought to be rather than the incomprehensible mess it too often is.
Apply any descriptor you wish. Interior Chinatown is an important book, a beautifully written one, an emotional experience, and an unforgettable journey.
Rob Weir
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