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A review by michellechien930
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
5.0
Cleverly innovative and provocative novel/screenplay on cultural assimilation, the minority model, Asian culture, generational trauma, stereotypical roles, and societal racism. Very smartly and punctually written like a screenplay, with life imitating the movies (or the other way around), author Charles Yu plays to his strengths by highlighting the immigrant experience of always being the side character to a greater performance by the Blacks and Whites. I was pleasantly surprised that the author was Taiwanese and incorporated a lot of Taiwan culture in "Interior Chinatown", with the accurate history of the KMT government's move to Taiwan and imposed iron grip on the island, White Terror, usage of the Taiwanese language, etc. One of my favorite books of the year, with amazingly written quotes such as:
“If you don't believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying "Country Roads," try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to "West Virginia, mountain mama," you're going to be singing along, and 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.”
“You’re here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.”
“This is it. The root of it all. The real history of yellow people in America. Two hundred years of being perpetual foreigners.”
“If you don't believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying "Country Roads," try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to "West Virginia, mountain mama," you're going to be singing along, and 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.”
“You’re here, supposedly, in a new land full of opportunity, but somehow have gotten trapped in a pretend version of the old country.”
“This is it. The root of it all. The real history of yellow people in America. Two hundred years of being perpetual foreigners.”