“Who gets to be an American? What does an American look like?”

-Charles Yu

Interior Chinatown is not your typical contemporary fiction novel. Large sections of the book are written in the form of a television script, in part because that’s how Willis Wu conceptualizes the world.

Willis, struggling with his identity as Chinese American and not feeling particularly either of those things, sees himself as a background character in his own life. The murder victim, the waiter with one line, and so on. He dreams of becoming Kung Fu Guy, which is the highest role he thinks a Chinese person can achieve.

Though it feels obfuscated at times by the commitment to the metaphor, Interior Chinatown is a great look at the cultural expectations placed on people of mixed identities, and how those expectations and the trickle down effects of them through generations affect even those who feel like they should know better. Towards the end of the book, when Willis is having to confront his own lowered expectations for himself, one line sums up the dilemma perfectly: “Instead of co-opting someone else’s experience or consciousness, he must define his own.” But how does he do that when he feels like the script was written long ago?

The formatting choices make this book shorter on words but longer on symbolism. You could finish it in a weekend, but it’ll stick with you long after.