Rather, Willis' aspirations are so sincere that he's an extremely endearing character who becomes more conflicted, layered and complex as we follow his journey and bungled attempts to become the lead in a show whose inherent structure won't ever allow him this status.Īlthough it doesn't use a conventional form of narrative this novel is very easy to read because it plays upon generic notions we're all familiar with from watching films and television. But this doesn't come across in a didactic way. That this is the ultimate he can aspire to says a lot about the limited ways a Western audience is prepared to see Asian actors in their TV shows and, by extension, in Western society itself. He has a clear idea of the series of roles he hopes to obtain as a stepladder to achieving what he sees as the supreme part of “Kung Fu Guy”. Rather he's an extra often relegated to being the “Generic Asian Man” in the background. Our hero is Willis Wu, but he is not the hero of this show. The novel takes the form of a script for a TV drama cop show called “Black and White” that's set in the Golden Palace restaurant in Chinatown. The story creatively and entertainingly lifts the lid not only on a location, but the hearts and minds of its characters whose sense of self is often occluded by stereotypes and (literally) the roles they are forced to play. Thien refers to Tsui's writing in that article and Charles Yu repeatedly quotes her in his novel “Interior Chinatown”. The development, appearance and history of these locations is something the journalist Bonnie Tsui has written about extensively. Also, Chinatowns' “alleyways and buildings are the physical evidence of a discriminatory history”. It wasn't until I read the author Madeline Thien's article 'Farewell to the fairy palace: are Chinatowns obsolete?' that I started thinking more complexly about these physical locations and how their “deliberately exoticised” architecture is more for tourists rather than its residents.

I don't think I ever necessarily felt I was getting an “authentic” Chinese experience but I enjoyed the food, confectionary and atmosphere. When I was growing up one of my favourite parts of visiting a big city was going to that city's Chinatown.

Interior chinatown book review