Steph Cha shares a meal and some notes on performing identity with the 'Interior Chinatown' author.
Koreatown, one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles, boasts an impressive array of restaurants serving some of the most exciting food in the city.is set in a fictional Chinatown SRO where protagonist Willis Wu lives with his family and neighbors, all of them working at Golden Palace, a Chinese restaurant/television set on the ground floor. Yu’s Chinatown is an amalgam, based less on any geographical place than on a state of being.
This marked separation is reflected in the structure and perspective of the novel, which is formatted like a screenplay and narrated almost entirely in the second person, creating an immersive but surreal reading experience.“Ever since you were a boy, you’ve dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy,” it begins. “You are not Kung Fu Guy. You are currently Background Oriental Male, but you’ve been practicing.”
Like all the other people in his building, Willis shifts among roles — Generic Asian Man, Striving Immigrant — hoping to one day become Kung Fu Guy. “I grew up in an era when Asian kids didn’t really have that many pop culture things — Bruce Lee was really it for a long time,” said Yu. “I think in that way, Kung Fu Guy is a really important symbol, or at least it was when I was a kid. Like, OK, there’s one thing I can be that’s cool.
Yu is aware of a standard type of knee-jerk reaction to complaints about Asian American representation in media: “‘Is this really all you have to complain about, that there’s not enough of you on TV? Come on, give me a break. You’re all doing so well.’ One, not true, on a number of levels,” he said. And two, representation isn’t an isolated problem. “There are a lot of people who don’t have exposure to Asian Americans on an everyday basis, and so TV is the way they get exposure.
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