Interior Chinatown

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-7

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Elusive National Identity

Willis is obsessed with fitting in. He’s a native-born American citizen who speaks perfect English and got perfect grades in school. Even his father, who emigrated from Taiwan, speaks without an accent. Ironically, nobody will give the elder Wu an academic job because he doesn’t sound Chinese. Willis concludes that this trait unnerves Americans. Willis and his father don’t fit the expected pattern.

Ironically, the two men discover that the best way to earn a living is to conform to that prejudice. Inscrutable Asian people who speak broken English are what mainstream America expects to see. Television shows such as Black and White perpetuate this belief by scripting standard roles for Asian people. Willis bemoans that he will never be the star of a show—that scripts will continue to relegate him to the support role of Special Guest Star.

Willis’s limited roles on Black and White function as a microcosm for his disengagement from life in general. Just as he doesn’t believe Asian people can have their own shows, Willis refuses to believe that Asian people can be accepted as authentic Americans. This begs the larger question of what a typical American looks like.

While most people would automatically accept the blond-haired, blue-eyed definition of an American, they have increasingly come to accept the notion of Black Americans too. Although Asian people have been on American soil nearly as long as African people, they aren’t accepted in the same way.

This existential dilemma eats at Willis throughout the novel. In his final statement to the court, he asks, “Who gets to be an American? What does an American look like? We’re trapped as guest stars in a small ghetto on a very special episode […] After two centuries here, why are we still not Americans? Why do we keep falling out of the story?” (251).

A Typecast Life

As the protagonist, Willis is having a terrible time defining himself. He tends to view his life as a series of scripted roles. Most of the book’s chapters bear a title that describes a character in a fictional drama: generic Asian man, ethnic recurring, striving immigrant, and kung fu dad. Even though Karen repeatedly tries to draw Willis out of this damaging paradigm, he fixates on the notion that he must act out the script.

His attention is often drawn to the roles his parents played over the years. He says of his father as the old man declines, “They ask him to put on silly hats. To cook chop suey, jump-kick vegetables into a thousand pieces. He hears a gong wherever he goes [...] You see where this is all headed, but it’s too late. You can’t control it. Neither can he” (160). Willis’s mother suffers a similar fate to her husband’s. Willis says of her roles, “Your mother weeps, and dies. Weeps and dies. Weeps and doesn’t die. Just weeps” (160).

It never occurs to Willis to question his own fate. He automatically assumes that show business will trap him in the same Asian roles for the rest of his acting career. Sadly, his assumptions about his work bleed over into his life. He sees all Asian Americans as trapped in a system that allows them to live in America while never being accepted as anything but foreigners.

Willis’s confusion over his identity is so extreme that his narration often slides between real life and his scripted roles in Black and White. The technique effectively conveys the character’s mental fog because it also confuses the reader. One is often not sure what is real in the fictional world of Interior Chinatown and what is merely one of Willis’s inner monologues. He often addresses the other people in his world by the roles they play rather than seeing them as human beings. The novel ends with Willis resolving some of his existential angst. His happy ending implies that the other residents of Chinatown may never do the same.

The Need for Self-Definition

The bulk of the novel portrays Willis as preoccupied with the way other people treat him and his people. He finds fault with the film industry for casting Asian people in limited roles. He likewise finds fault with American society for stubbornly refusing to see Asian people as anything other than foreigners even though they have been citizens for generations.

Both Karen and Older Brother help Willis shift his perspective away from what other people are doing to him. They point out that the greatest damage springs from what he’s doing to himself. The courtroom scene is pivotal in changing Willis’s perception in this regard. As Older Brother points out, “I never left. Not really. Not in the way that counts—inside. In my mind. Another part of me is in a different place now. Interior Chinatown isn’t the whole world anymore” (218).

While the title of the book can refer to a set location in a screenplay, it can also mean the internal Chinatown values that constitute Willis’s true prison. If he continues to think and act like his parents, the external world they inhabit will trap him. Only after Willis takes personal responsibility for his thoughts can he forge an authentic identity outside the scripted roles that his family, his culture, and Hollywood have given him.

The courtroom scene becomes a surreal blend of the Black and White missing-persons script and Willis’s quest for his missing identity. He has an epiphany that leads him to declare to the court:

I spent most of my life trapped. Interior Chinatown. I made it out, to become Kung Fu Dad. But that was just another role. A better role than I’ve ever had, but still a role. I can’t just keep doing the same thing over and over again. My dad did that. And where did it get him […] You never allowed him a name (251).

Willis wants a name for himself because a name symbolizes identity. In the end, Willis chooses to be a husband and father. He hopes that this role will authentically express his character beyond Interior Chinatown.