One of Willis Wu’s biggest challenges throughout the novel is understanding the disconnect between Americans and what ultimately causes an immigrant to be recognized as an American. He constantly tries to fit into a world that, Yu writes, does not have the capacity to accept him, or any Asians, completely. Yu states that there is an internalized inferiority among Asians in America (Yu 232). Society has planted the idea into their minds that they have not suffered as much as Black Americans, and so they are basically not allowed to feel that they have been oppressed as so. Because they were not forced into slavery, they did not have laws that stripped away their lives, and they were not physically oppressed for years because of the color of their skin, they cannot complain. While society has argued this, it is simply a false perception.
As presented in the book, there were numerous laws, not just the minimally educated Chinese Exclusion Act, that took the basic right to live away from Asians. Personally, I did not know many of these laws existed, such as the requirement to carry a permit and the subsequent punishment, or even the fact that an American woman would be stripped of her citizenship if she married an illegal Asian immigrant (Yu 216). “One year of hard labor” sounds like a sugarcoated legal enslavement, in my opinion. The fact that they would not even be sent to prison and serve out a punishment there, but would be subject to orders of physical labor, grossly glorifies forced labor that works people like slaves.
Perhaps Asian Americans have not suffered through the exact slavery defined in terms of United States history, but that is not a reason to discount their experience to only basic prejudice. Their experience may not fit a cookie-cutter mold of what Black Americans have lived through, but it can be said that their experiences are similar, rather than follow the idea that Asian Americans have not suffered at the hands of the American system. They have faced laws that did not allow them to live their lives, similar to Black Americans have. Their inability to buy land to live on, their inability to get jobs, their inability to marry a white woman if they want to, is a shared experience. Lastly, apparently from the American point of view, there is a need to assign a literal color of the rainbow to someone’s skin in order to emphasize differences that are worthy of oppression.
Why is it impossible for an Asian American to be defined as an American? The social system is built only for those who are white, and even that depends on the degree of whiteness. In Yu’s parodical Black and White adaptation of Law and Order, even having a white woman as a star of the show is pushing the social boundaries. There have been attempts to expand the system to allow for Black progress but asking that of the United States is apparently too much, considering Black prejudice still exists. Having a Black man as a star of the show is also extremely controversial, but just accepted enough to let it happen. America prides itself in accepting all people to live out the American Dream, but in reality, Step One is being accepted in, just to work your whole life towards being completely accepted, but the system sets limits to avoid that achievement.
Much like in Adichie’s Americanah and Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, identity is an integral theme in Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown. One of the quotes which stood out to me most in this novel was Older Brother’s claim that Willis Wu “is guilty . . . of wanting to be part of something that never wanted him” (Yu 239). Because of this, Wu has “killed countless Asian men” only to, “six weeks later, [become] them again” (Yu 239); only, this idea of “killing” does not refer to physical violence but rather an internal destruction of one’s identity. Wu explains that “when you’re dead, you are nobody” (Yu 129), explicitly linking “death” and identity. Shortly after, however, his point that “if you never die–if you play the same role too long–you start to get confused” (Yu 130) emphasizes the necessity of a dynamic identity. Wu’s obsession with becoming Kung Fu Man, on the other hand, represents the extreme end of dynamic: Wu grows in his relationships (for example, with Karen (Yu 170) and Phoebe (Yu 197)) only in the periods when he is “dead” or has otherwise given up on his dream identity. This trend extends to other characters, as well, such as Wu’s mother who “used to die all the time” but only “got to be [his]mother” (Yu 130) at these times. Avoiding both extremes of identity allows for one to experience growth in personal relationships and to simultaneously be content with oneself.
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