A review by marimoose
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

informative reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This was such a strange piece of fiction!

You came here, your parents and their parents and their parents, and you always seem to have just arrived and yet never seem to have actually arrived.

But damn, for a book running under 300 pages, it sure packed a wallop about the Asian immigration and assimilation experience. And all in the guise of a fictional character constantly casted as Generic Asian Man in this fictional TV show called Black and White. It read as a little funny, a little discomforting, a little real, and certainly reflective of the author's lived experience when it comes to having parents immigrating into the United States from Taiwan. While a majority of this experience certainly isn't my own as a SEA diaspora person, parts still resonate, and I found I flew through the audiobook half derisive of the fact that even today, people still see yellow and designate the color as 'other' despite the peoples having also had a history dating just as far back as the country's.

This was definitely a lot of food for thought, and I sped through it fairly quickly.