Chineseness And Americanness In Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown

Chinese American literature has always been an important branch of American literature with rich themes.Among them,a very popular one is the relationship between Chineseness and Americanness.The two ends in the immigrants’ ethnic identity were originally positioned in a conflicting intersection,especially after the issue of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act,which prevented the integration of Chinese Americans into the American culture.Different as they seem,in today’s multicultural America,they don’t necessarily exclude each other any longer.The cultural essence of Amerianness implied by the Anglo-protestant culture and the American Creed is what Chinese Americans eagerly pursue while the group may also rely heavily on the constant support from Chineseness and Chinese culture at the same time.For Chinese Americans,the second and later generations in particular,they usually find themselves stranded between the two worlds.On the one hand,these American-born-Chinese hold a strong sense of consent to the American culture that they have been familiar with since they were young.On the other hand,their Chinese ethnicity still makes it hard for them to fully enter the mainstream society.Yet,the Chinese community and family which they belong to also keep inspiring them positively.Such confusion has been discussed in many Chinese American works like Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior,Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club,etc.Charles Yu’s Interior Chinatown,as one typical piece of Chinese American literature of the twenty-first century,also focused on this theme.As the final winner of the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction,Yu’s book developed around the migration living and working experience of Willis Wu,the son of first generation Chinese immigrant parents,in Hollywood.Willis tried very hard to earn the big role of Kung Fu Guy in the filming of Black and White,only to find that Kung Fu Guy was just another kind of Generic Asian Man.During his Hollywood adventure,Willis was trapped in the archetype due to his failure to appropriately deal with his Chineseness and Americanness.Moreover,what Willis underwent wasn’t his experience only.The same trap had made his parents and countless Chinese Americans feel at a great loss.This thesis takes a deep insight into Charles Yu’s renowned novel in terms of both content and form based on the analysis of the two ends in Chinese Americans’ ethnic identity,namely,Chineseness and Americanness.There are in all five chapters.Chapter One gives an introduction to the book and its author,thematic development of Chinese American literature,and the two key words.Chapter Two stresses the marginalized oriental side of Chinese ethnicity through looking back into history to review the struggling ethnic experience of Chinese Americans and analyzing their current failures to join the American mainstream.Whether they dreamt to become Model Minority,or played Young Asian Man or Kung Fu Guy in Hollywood,they all ended up as Generic Asian Man,an archetype distorted by the hostile American mainstream.Chapter Three points outs the inevitable intersection and positive interaction between Chineseness and Americanness in the construction and justification of Chinese Americans’ individual identities and their joint efforts in awakening the Missing Asian from Hollywood archetypes.Thanks to the novel’s screenplay format,Charles Yu managed to project Willis’ s experience upon more of his readers beyond pages and audience on the stage,as a result of which the awakening managed to happen in three dimensions.Chapter Four focuses on the post-awakening existence of Chinese Americans thanks to the negotiation between the two ends in Chinese Americans’ ethnic identity.Besides,since the author was a Chinese American himself,the dual influence of Chineseness and Americanness was also reflected in Yu’s writing of this literature piece.Thus,the new existence for Chinese Americans referred to not only identity renovation but also literation creation.Chapter Five helps to wrap up the whole thesis.In this way,Charles Yu succeeded in proposing a new paradigm concerning ethnic experience and cultural consent for Chinese Americans which depended on the joint cooperation between Chineseness and Americanness as was demonstrated in his Interior Chinatown.