Interior Chinatown

Interior Chinatown is a satirical novel by Charles Yu about the roles Asian Americans are allowed to play, on screen and off. Willis Wu lives in a cramped single-room-occupancy hotel in Chinatown and works at the Golden Palace restaurant, where a police procedural called Black and White is always filming. In that world he is Generic Asian Man, a background extra, and he dreams of one day rising to the most respected part available to someone who looks like him: Kung Fu Guy. When an unexpected opportunity pulls him into the spotlight, Willis begins to uncover Chinatown's buried history and his own family's past. Told largely in the form of a screenplay, the book blends comedy and heartbreak to explore immigration, assimilation and identity. It won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction.