Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu

Wednesday, June 28, 2023--San Antonio 

Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu won the National Book Award for fiction in 2020.  It is the story of a young man who lives in Chinatown in Los Angeles with his father and mother.  All are working actors in films and TV series, but have had little success because of the limitations they face in casting due to being of Asian descent.  At times, the thoughts of the protagonist are hilarious.  But the purpose of the book does not seem to be to "entertain" as much as it is to show how racism and racist laws have held Asians back for most of the history of the USA.  The story is often told in TV or film "script" form which is interesting.  But it is told during the performance of the script in which actors often verbally address each other quietly off-script; it can be a bit confusing in terms of understanding what is happening.  And the end of the book seems to turn to magical realism where it is written like a script that is being performed with the characters becoming real people in a court case against the protagonist.  It's all very unique which is probably why it won the award.  But for me it was a bit too confusing (without enough hilarity) to rate it higher than 3 1/2 stars out of 5.