And letting that define how I see other people. Internalizing the role so completely that I’ve lost track of where reality starts and the performance begins. Playful but heartfelt, a send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes, Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu's most moving, daring, and masterly novel yet. At least that's what he has been told, time and time again. He's a bit player here, too, but he dreams of being Kung Fu Guy - the most respected role that anyone who looks like him can attain. Yet every day he leaves his tiny room in a Chinatown SRO and enters the Golden Palace restaurant, where Black and White, a procedural cop show, is in perpetual production. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but he is always relegated to a prop. Willis Wu doesn't perceive himself as a protagonist even in his own life: He's merely Generic Asian man. From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.
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