Interior Chinatown

This was different. It took me quite awhile to get into it, but once I did I found it enjoyable.

That bit about Taiwanese immigrants loving to sing John Denver for karaoke is A+ authenticity.

I put this one off because a couple of reviewers who I usually agree with were not fans. Also, there is something with me and award winners- I usually don't enjoy them. Then again, they are rarely as imaginative as this.
I spent Saturday with Interior Chinatown (audio version, in bits, over the entire day), and I loved it. I think I actually snorted coffee out of my nose at one point. I went through a giant range of emotions. It was when he got to Phoebe that I realized he had tied my heart into a bow and handed it back to me. I cannot believe how much he accomplished in a four hour read.
I have to go find more of his work.

This has been a good year for books, and this surprised me with how remarkable it was. Easily one of the best for me: engaging, heartfelt, funny, thought provoking. I loved it.

I have a new favorite book this year and I'm pretty sure it's cresting into my top 10 books of all time: INTERIOR CHINATOWN by Charles Yu. 
 
The storytelling in INTERIOR CHINATOWN is commanding. I had no idea TV scripts - the scripts themselves, not the acting bringing the scripts to life - could be so arresting. 
 
It's difficult to explain what this book is because it's so many things. It's an exploration of Asian American masculinity interlaced with the model minority myth – all told from the perspective of our protagonist, Willis Wu. It's also a glimpse behind the scenes at pop culture and Hollywood tropes. This book challenges you to center neither white nor Black, but the unique experiences of marginalized people who don't fit into the racial binary. Ugh this is all coming out clunkily - I'm a reader, not a writer - but it's very meta while still being character-driven. 
 
If you're like me, at some points in this book you might be confused. “Are we in the script, or are we out? Are all these people who live in the Chinatown SRO actually actors, or are we in the show when we're not in the show?” Around the 50 page mark, “have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” kept popping into my head. (It's a Westworld quote.) For good reason, I found out; Yu is also an award-winning story editor and writer on Westworld. Stick with it. He makes biting and incisive social commentary that is also really funny. Yu delves into what it means to be a trope in the real world, and what it's like when society has already made up its mind about you. 

It's a bit of metafiction. Willis Wu dreams of becoming Kung Fu Guy, to transcend a life lived on the margins as disgraced son, striving immigrant, delivery guy or generic Asian man. He's living in the world of the cop drama Black and White, more specifically within the walls of the Golden Palace.

Willis is frustrated. He, along with his parents, live a state of perpetually having just arrived, never really arriving. All their striving, all of his hope, and still he can't escape being trapped by his most salient features, to not be seen as anything more than Asian. Guy.

But he's just playing their game by their rules. Is there anything more for him than this trajectory to Kung Fu guy?

Out in the world we're seeing Asian romantic leads, a successful Asian rom-com, Academy award nods, an imminent Asian Marvel hero. It's a far cry from Mickey Rooney in yellow-face and maybe that's progress. But that's just as narrow a world as Interior Chinatown. We're still inhabiting a world that is seeing a sharp uptick in anti-Asian sentiment and sly asides about the Chinese virus and bat-eating Asians. We're still trapped in the world of Black and White.

I get the intent and I think this would make an incredible show or miniseries. It's just the right kind of TV clever - and works within the medium of what has done more to shape American ideas of Asians. There's a lot of visual cues that would be instantly recognizable and would play beautifully onscreen. On the page, I still need some literary fireworks to carry it off.

Smart, inventive, fun concept, flawless execution, and yet that's mostly what it is, a concept, used to convey a message. Even the small bits of story and character journey feel like the minimum amount required to get the message across. It's still a great work and worth reading, just feels a bit like short story material stretched to tell a big message