Interior Chinatown - Becoming an Individual

    Throughout Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown, much is made of Kung Fu Guy as a symbol of the pinnacle of success for an Asian Americans. As the plot unfolds though, it becomes clear that becoming Kung Fu Guy merely continues to reinforce the status quo, one that rids Asians of individuality, and the only way to break free of this framework is to reject the premise that the role is the greatest honor available for an Asian.

    Throughout the novel, Willis’ goal to become Kung Fu Guy doesn’t exist in a vacuum but defines basically all of Chinatown’s male residents. Willis' father, for instance, after climbing the ladder for years, was eventually made a Kung Fu master, but is still unsatisfied thereafter because “despite the bigger check, the honorable title, the status in the show … nothing has changed” (159). He is still seen as an Asian man and expected to act as such. At the beginning of the novel, chronologically after these events, Willis’ father is introduced to the reader as a bit part actor, the world forgetting who he was. Willis, knowing his father’s fate, recognizes the futility in becoming Kung Fu Guy, explaining to the other Asian men he works with that if one of them is made Kung Fu Guy, they may get some more screen time and some more money but nothing more before they fall into obscurity (60). Based on this assessment early in the novel, the reader could assume that Willis, if given the opportunity to transcend the system he has grown up in all his life, he would take it. However, when presented with this opportunity in the form of his wife, Karen’s, television show that would relocate their family out of Chinatown, Willis subverts this expectation, remains in Chinatown, and continues pursuing becoming Kung Fu Guy because the title “is what someone like me (Willis) has available to him” (179). Willis doesn’t pursue the Kung Fu Guy role because he thinks it will bring him long term success, he has evidence to the contrary, but because he believes that there are no other goals available to him. In subscribing to this idea, Willis is in danger of falling into the same trap as his father, only breaking free of that idea when he becomes Kung Fu Guy himself and realizes he was “still in a show that doesn’t have a role for [him]” (180). Before, the understanding that Kung Fu Guy wouldn’t bring long term prosperity or honor was not enough for Willis to abandon his pursuit of the role because it was, nevertheless, still the greatest honor available to him within the framework he viewed the world through. It is only after he realizes that he is guilty of letting his roles define him, just like his father, and that there are greater honors available, that he breaks free (246). He becomes, in this moment, not Generic Asian Man or Kung Fu Guy, as he’s been, but his own person.