NEA Big Read

Charles Yu has written four major novels, the most recent being 2020s Interior Chinatown, a thoughtful novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play. The story follows Willis Wu, an up-and-coming Taiwanese-American actor, who keeps getting typecast in stereotypical “Asian” roles. After stepping out into the limelight he begins to discover not only the hidden history of Chinatown but of his family’s legacy and what that means to him in modern America. 

Interior Chinatown alone has won the National Book Award for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the Le Prix Médicis étranger and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. The novel was named Most Anticipated Book by: Entertainment Weekly, Time Magazine, The A.V. Club, Lit Hub, Woman’s Day, The Rumpus, Thrillist, and more.