Interior Chinatown

Interior Chinatown is a 2020 novel by Charles Yu. It is his second novel and was published by Pantheon Books on January 28, 2020. It won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The novel was also longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and was shortlisted for the Prix Médicis étranger. Summary The novel uses the narrative structure of the screenplay format to tell the tale of Willis Wu, the "Generic Asian Man" who is stuck playing "Background Oriental Male" and occasionally "Delivery Guy" in the fictional police procedural Black and White but who longs to be "Kung Fu Guy" on screens worldwide. Background Interior Chinatown was published in hardcover, e-book and audiobook format by Pantheon Books on January 28, 2020. The audiobook was narrated by actor Joel de la Fuente. On January 27, 2020, Yu appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah to discuss the book, as well as the lack of on-screen representation for Asian Americans and the model minority stereotype of Asian Americans. Yu also discussed the novel in an interview with Scott Simon on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday on January 25, 2020, and in an appearance on Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB) Radio Hour with Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf on February 3, 2020.