And, you know, what Willis dreams of is actually being part of the show in a bigger way. And it's called "Black and White," because there's one Black cop and one white cop, and they are the leads of the show, they're the heroes. If you imagine, you know, "CSI" or "Law & Order," some version of that. He exists in this show called "Black and White," which is, you know, a police procedural. And yet, you know, this book, what it- I was trying to do was imagining a narrative from that person, who the story is very much not about. He doesn't have a story, to say the least, right? So he's just kind of there, as part of the scenery. He's the guy in the back delivering food or unloading a van, and he doesn't generally have any lines in the show. He's very much a background, you know, character. Our hero Willis Wu wants more-he wants a story of a story of his own.Ĭharles Yu: Willis's job at the beginning of the book is, you know, specifically, Generic Asian Man number three, slash delivery guy. To call this limiting for the people involved is quite the understatement and at the heart of the book. It’s the story of Willis Wu who is doomed to play various generic Asian characters in a TV procedural called “Black and White,” and that omnipresent television set dictates the roles of everyone in the book based on their race, gender, and age. Written in the form of a television screenplay Interior Chinatown is an insightful, funny, and searing exploration of Asian-American identity and representation in popular culture. I think the career trajectory is important when you consider the premise of his novel-the National Book Award winner Interior Chinatown. Then television came calling, and Yu found himself writing for the first season of the HBO series West World and has spent the last five years writing for and producing other series like Legion and Here and Now…and of course writing fiction. What followed was a short story collection, a novel, numerous stories, book reviews, and essays in magazines. Charles Yu was a successful lawyer who was also a successful writer. Jo Reed: That was Charles Yu-he’s the author of the 2020 National Book Award for fiction Interior Chinatown and this is Art Works the weekly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. And, you know, I think the book was me trying to wrestle with what this does to- both internally, but I think also what it does to everyone else as well. Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.Ĭharles Yu: I grew up in the '80s and '90s, watching- basically never seeing Asians on screen, and when I did see them, it was often in these very kind of minor and very stereotypical roles.
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