Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown is an intimate, thought-provoking story about the struggles of being an Asian Immigrant. Throughout the book, Yu uses many unique stylistic choices to convey his thoughts and feelings about topics that are not easily talked about. Yu tells this story in a second-person perspective, giving the reader the sense that they are in the head of the main character, Willis Wu. This makes the story feel very personal to Willis, as the reader gets the true uncut thoughts on life. The author also wrote many parts of this book as a script for a TV show or movie, which works particularly well as Willis Wu is an aspiring actor in Hollywood.
Throughout the novel, Willis constantly talks about how his ultimate goal is to become “Kung-Fu Guy”, a role that his father took on in the business for many years throughout Willis’s childhood. Many of his peers in the Chinatown community he lived in also shared this dream, and thought of Kung-Fu guy as the most desirable position in their society. Despite this, Willis’s mother, who was an actress throughout Willis’s life, knew that Willis could do more with his life. After Willis is practicing his kung-fu in their small, cramped apartment, Willis’s Mother says “Don’t Grow up to be Kung Fu Guy… Be More” (Yu 56). Willis’s desire for this role is self limiting in the fact that society has placed a cap on how far Asians can go in the acting industry. A role such as “Kung-Fu Guy” plays into Asian stereotypes. Asians are only viewed by their race and cannot be in a role as a normal person. Willis’s mom understands this through her and her husband’s experience and knows that her son can do more. She wants her son to break the social norms placed on them and become a full American, rather than be viewed as a weird immigrant.
The end of the novel is the first time the reader actually gets to see Willis break free of the chains put on him by society. In this section, Willis is put on trial for stealing a car, but this trial quickly turns from a prosecution of Willis into the author’s chance to rant and put his real emotions behind his writing. Willis and his lawyer, older brother, both talk about the Asian American experience in America. Willis, in his final remarks to the jury, asks, “If someone showed you my picture on the street, how would you describe it? You might say, an Asian fellow. Asian dude. Asian man. How many of you would say: that’s an American?” (Yu 250). Willis clearly feels displaced and out of touch in America, despite living his entire life there. This feeling by Willis is likely shared by hundreds of thousands of Asian Americans, who are all viewed as aliens and immigrants in their home country. I think this book does a great job, especially in the final act, of capturing Yu’s feelings about how Asian Americans are treated in society.
I think you touched on a really important point in the novel. Throughout the novel, Willis is always trying to become “Kung Fu Man” because it is all he believes he can become. The only role models he has in Hollywood are the stereotypical asians who know how to do Kung Fu. However, at the same time, it is not like that is Willis’ own option. Since Willis has done well in school, he can pursue a career elsewhere, but he has imposed a self-inflicted restriction on becoming “Kung Fu Guy.” Why does Charles Yu make Willis place this own restriction on himself? I believe that Yu is trying to get across the idea that not all Asians are successful and that many Asians do struggle. There is a stereotype that all Asians are good at math, get good grades, and become something successful, but in the novel, there are many Asians who did well in school but are struggling, as depicted by the many Asians who live in the crumbling building where Willis lives. Many of these struggling Asians aspire to become the only role model they have, which is “Kung Fu Guy.” At the end of the novel, through Older Brother’s rant, Yu makes a statement that many Americans do not recognize the Asian struggle because their “Oppression is second class” (233) in comparison to the struggle blacks have gone through in American history. Yu tries to show through the constant struggle of the characters that Asians in fact do struggle and not all are successful.
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