All the world’s a stage as they say, and we are merely players. While the screenplay structure and in-your-face stereotypes may not work for some, the techniques are certainly thought-provoking. But only if he remembers to do the accent. If he dares to dream, he hopes to one day work his way up to Delivery Guy, then maybe, just maybe, Kung Fu Guy.

The protagonist, Willis Wu, is an extra for a crime procedural called “Black & White” (think “Law & Order”), living his life on and off the screen as Background Oriental Male. It’s written in the form of a TV screenplay, which creates a very meta rumination on life imitating art imitating life. Can’t recommend it enough.What a clever, clever book this is! Charles Yu’s award-winning 2020 novel is a lean, mean, satire machine, packing a punch (or karate chop, as he’d probably write with a wink) in a mere 288 pages. It’s funny and sarcastic and raw and brilliant. The format definitely took some getting used to for me, but once I got in the groove of things I couldn’t get enough. With much of it written as if reading a script for a fictional, typical procedural cop show called ‘Black & White’ about a tone deaf Black and white detective duo working a case in a restaurant in Chinatown (which I can sense CBS trying to actually make in 3, 2, 1.), Yu cleverly satirizes and skewers Hollywood and pop culture in general. While he chases the seemingly unattainable goal of one day becoming “Kung Fu Guy,” the novel is peppered with flashbacks to his parents’ immigration journeys and love story, the lives of fellow neighbors in his Chinatown SRO, the stereotypical roles Asians in general are forced to play, and overall the grim reality of what it means to be an immigrant in a predominantly white country.

Reading it sometimes felt like slipping in and out of a dream, as the narrator - Willis Wu, who doesn’t see himself as the protagonist of his own life, but rather “Generic Asian Man” - imagines something more for himself. Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction last year, Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu just might be the most unique, inventive book I’ve ever read - or at least read in a long, long time.

Interior chinatown book review