Interior Chinatown

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary: “Act I: Generic Asian Man”

Willis Wu is a young Asian American living in Los Angeles. Like his parents and most people in his Chinatown neighborhood, he’s an actor. The novel is more like a film script than a free-flowing narrative. Throughout, it designates each character and location. The character dialog has tags to identify the role that each person plays in the scene, which means that the same person has different roles assignments in different chapter scenes. Likewise, the beginning of each scene identifies its location. For example, the location tag “INT. GOLDEN PALACE” means that the scene is the interior of a Chinese restaurant called the Golden Palace. While Willis is the storyteller, he refers to himself from a second-person point of view in keeping with the screenplay template of his story.

Willis begins his tale by wryly describing the types of roles available to Asian people. They tend to be cast as extras with limited speaking lines. His mother and father graduated from young roles to generic roles as Old Asian Woman and Old Asian Man. Every male Asian actor aspires to be a character known as Kung Fu Guy. As a child, Willis trained with his father, who had the same ambition and briefly achieved it.

Now in his seventies, Mr. Wu is growing physically weak and forgetful. He is poor. Willis says, “Poor is relative, of course. None of you were rich or had any dreams of being rich or even knew anyone rich. But the widest gulf in the world is the distance between getting by and not quite getting by” (21). Willis worries that his father is struggling to make ends meet. Mrs. Wu has separated from her husband, but the two still live in the same apartment building.

Willis muses about the best kung fu pupil his father ever had. This young man is known as Older Brother because everyone in the neighborhood looks up to him and sees him as a success. Even though he never wanted to be Kung Fu Guy, his friends cast him in that role. Older Brother is also a recurring character on a police procedural show called Black and White, which is about two detectives: a black male and a white female. The show shoots primarily in Chinatown in and around the Golden Palace restaurant, and most locals are cast in bit parts.

Although everyone expects Older Brother’s part to expand, the script unexpectedly cuts him. Willis says, “There was a ceiling. Always had been, always would be. Even for him. Even for our hero, there were limits to the dream of assimilation, to how far any of you could make your way into the world of Black and White” (29-30).

Chapter 2 Summary: “Act II: Int. Golden Palace”

Willis talks about the types of roles he gets on Black and White. He believes that audiences can more easily grasp the polarity of Black and white. Asian people are enigmas who don’t quite fit into the narrative. Willis thinks, “You do the cop show. You get your little check. You wonder: Can you change it? Can you be the one who actually breaks through?” (39).

After work, Willis goes home to a single-room occupancy (SRO) apartment building in Chinatown. All the tenants on each floor share a communal bathroom and shower. They live above the Golden Palace restaurant, where much of Black and White is shot. Many of the residents work at the Golden Palace as waiters or cooks in addition to their acting jobs.

Willis lives in the same building as his separated parents. He tries to avoid getting a guilt trip from his mother as he goes upstairs to his flat. Recalling an incident from childhood, he remembers that his mother made him promise never to aspire to be Kung Fu Guy. She urged him to be more than that. “Lying there in the silence, you try to imagine what she could possibly mean. Kung Fu Guy is the pinnacle. How could anyone be more?” (56).

In the cramped, noisy building, everyone shares the same dreams and the same hardships. One night, Willis finds water leaking into his apartment. Old Mr. Fong has slipped in the shower on the floor above. He hit his head and died with the water running. His son comes to arrange the funeral and collect Fong’s meager belongings.

Willis switches his focus to the activities in the downstairs restaurant. After the customers leave, the Asian staff takes over the karaoke mike. The older Asian customers all have a fondness for John Denver. His own father gives a good rendition of “Country Roads.” Willis says, “By the time he’s done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who’s been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home” (66).

The next night, Willis is back on the cop show. His father has been cast as an old Asian man who doesn’t understand English. Willis is the generic Asian guy who acts as his interpreter. “It’s his reaction that breaks something inside of you. Or his nonreaction. That this is who he is, Old Asian Man. Nothing more. His acceptance of the role. You have to do something” (72). Willis steps up to speak his lines, faking a Chinese accent.

Chapters 1-2 Analysis

The first segment of the book may present a steep learning curve for the reader. Immersing oneself in the novel is a disorienting experience, but that is the author’s intention. He wishes to convey the sense of disorientation an Asian person feels in trying to be an accepted part of mainstream American culture.

Stylistic devices become important in this novel because the author relies so heavily on them to create his extended metaphor of the Asian American experience as an inauthentic role. Yu deliberately chooses to tell his story as a disjointed screenplay. Some scenes are part of the actual Black and White shooting script for the day. Other parts are conversations that Willis has with his parents after work. Some are snippets of memory from his childhood or stream-of-consciousness musings about his life. Each segment unfolds as if it were a different screenplay. The narrative refers to his father as Old Asian Man (his current role on Black and White) or Sifu (his role as Kung Fu Guy earlier in his career). However, the narrative never reveals the real names of the actors who play the two lead roles in Black and White: detectives Green and Turner. The author highlights their racial polarity as White Lady Cop (Green) and Black Dude Cop (Turner).

The most pivotal relationship in these chapters is between Willis and his father. Mr. Wu is now old, impoverished, and growing senile, yet he still takes acting jobs as Old Asian Man. Willis sadly recalls his father’s glory days as a kung fu master. Ironically, the son aspires to be Kung Fu Guy even as he watches his father’s decline. At this point in the story, Willis is still a fatalist who believes no other roles in life or in film are possible for Asian people in America.