I guess it’s supposed to show how diverse Hollywood is. Willis gets parts on a tv show called Black and White about two cops-one is Black man and the other a White woman. The irony here is that while he laments about all the typecasting that Hollywood does, he’s choosing one of the most stereotypical roles to strive for. Not romantic leading man or international spy hero or heroic lawyer or police officer or soldier. The one role he strives for more than anything else is Kungfu man. None of the roles he can get go beyond his ethnicity. As a Chinese-American male, about the only roles he can get are ones that typecast his ethnicity-restaurant worker, Chinese delivery boy, filial son. Born in the United States he doesn’t speak Chinese all that well. I should probably start by telling you the synopsis before going much further so you can see what I mean. Is what is happening part of the script? Is it all in the character’s head? Is what is happening between scenes or is it the scene itself? However, you never know when the television show starts and ends and real life begins. Sometimes the story is told while scenes are being shot and sometimes between scenes. The book partly takes place on a television set. Even the typewriter-like font resembles a script.

“Interior Chinatown” are the same words used in a script to describe the location of a movie or tv show in Chinatown. The story is told in the format of a screenplay. What’s so gimmicky about Interior Chinatown? If he hadn’t structured the book in the way he did, it might have come off as preachy. Another reason to read it.Ĭharles Yu has a lot to say in this book about stereotypes of Chinese-Americans, Hollywood type-casting, and identity. Oh and by the way, his book won the National Book Award for best fiction of 2020. Luckily, Interior Chinatown ( AMAZON | BOOKSHOP.ORG) is the latter. Without their gimmicky features, they just wouldn’t be as damn good. But there are other times when they just work perfectly. Sometimes clever, gimmicky books come across as pretentious bores (George Saunders – Lincoln in the Bardo). Wow! What an incredibly clever, funny, and thought-provoking book!

Interior of chinatown