Ruff’s upcoming production of As You Like It is adapted by Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho), features Jeff Yung as Orlando, and has us thinking about Asian representation (and stereotyping) on stage and screen. This book dives deep into that topic. Let’s discuss!
Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Wednesday May 27 at 8pm on Zoom
Interior Chinatown is available as an audiobook, an ebook, through your library, or for 10% off at our favourite indie Toronto bookshop Queen Books (when you mention Ruff Reads!).
DM us or contact christine@shakespeareintheruff.com for the Zoom link. (Don’t have time to read or watch, but still interested in the conversation? Join us anyway!)
About Interior Chinatown:
Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as the protagonist in his own life: he’s merely Generic Asian Man. Sometimes he gets to be Background Oriental Making a Weird Face or even Disgraced Son, but always he is relegated to a prop. 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. 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. Or is it?
After stumbling into the spotlight, Willis finds himself launched into a wider world than he’s ever known, discovering not only the secret history of Chinatown, but the buried legacy of his own family. Infinitely inventive and deeply personal, exploring the themes of pop culture, assimilation, and immigration—Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterful novel yet.
About Charles Yu:
Charles Yu is the author of four books, including Interior Chinatown (the winner of the 2020 National Book Award for fiction), and the novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe (a New York Times Notable Book and a Time magazine best book of the year). He received the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 Award and was nominated for two Writers Guild of America Awards for his work on the HBO series, Westworld. He has also written for shows on FX, AMC, and HBO. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired, among other publications. Together with TaiwaneseAmerican.org, he established the Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Writing Prizes, in honor of his parents.