Book Club Guide

Interior Chinatown

by Charles Yu · 2020 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

Willis Wu's life as a screenplay — formatted, scripted, never his own
Hollywood's roles for Asian Americans — Generic Asian Man and what comes after
The structure of the novel as the argument — form enacting content

About this book

Willis Wu, an actor perpetually cast as 'Generic Asian Man' in a police procedural filmed in his own neighbourhood, lives his life as if it were a screenplay — formatted as a script, complete with stage directions. Yu's National Book Award-winning novel is a satire of Hollywood's treatment of Asian Americans that becomes something much stranger and sadder as it develops.

Published in 2020, Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award for Fiction. Yu has worked as a television writer, and the screenplay format draws directly on that experience and on the specific roles available to Asian American actors in Hollywood.

Discussion questions

The novel is formatted as a screenplay throughout — scene directions, character cues. What does this formal choice achieve — and how does it develop as the novel progresses?
Willis is cast as 'Generic Asian Man' and dreams of becoming 'Kung Fu Guy' — the highest role available to him. How does Yu use this hierarchy of roles to satirise Hollywood's treatment of Asian American actors?
The novel begins as comedy/satire and becomes something more emotionally serious — about Willis's family history, his father's immigration story. How does this tonal shift work?
The title 'Interior Chinatown' refers to a film set location but also to Willis's interior life within a neighbourhood that is itself a kind of set. How does Yu develop this double meaning?
Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award. What does its formal experimentation achieve that a more conventional satire of representation could not?