Book 10: Interior Chinatown (2020) - Charles Yu

Saturday March 22

What is the book about?

Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a world wider than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown but also the buried legacy of his own family.

Fragment (to get an idea of the style)

“To be honest though it can sometimes be hard to tell with Sifu, who is famously inscrutable. If you could only show him what you’ve become. All you want is for him to make that face, the one that looks like internal distress possibly of a gastrointestinal nature but actually indicates something closer to Deeply Repressed Secret Pride Honorable Father Has for His Young but Promising Son; means Deliciously Bittersweet Pain That Comes from Knowing Honorable Teacher Is No Longer Needed. That’s how you see it in your head: he would make that face, smile, you’d smile back. Credits roll and you’d walk off, arm in arm, to the horizon.”

First Sentence

“Ever since you were a young boy, you’ve dreamed of being Kung Fu Guy.”

Winning second and third sentence

As unrealistic as that dream may have been, it was already more realistic than the dream of the even younger you. See, ever since you were a younger boy, you've dreamed of being Kung Fu Panda, and that dream has never really left you.

Caya van der Mei, student English Language and Culture

Nice to know

Charles Yu wrote many short stories, which you can find in the short-story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. Yu also wrote the novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. You can find Interior Chinatown in the University's Library.