Literary LA: Satire, Metafiction, Anti-Racist Critique in Charles Yu's "Interior Chinatown"

On the LARB Radio Hour, we talk with writer Charles Yu about his new book, the novel-in-the-form-of-a-screenplay "Interior Chinatown."

By LARB Radio HourFebruary 3, 2020

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Kate and Medaya talk with award-winning screenwriter and novelist Charles Yu about his new book, Interior Chinatown; an experimental, yet eminently enjoyable, novel-in-the-form-of-a-screenplay. Charles discusses how he came to write such a formally challenging book, in which the central character's world is defined by, and limited to, the horizons available to Asian and Asian-American characters in popular film and television.

Also, J Hoberman, author of Make My Day: Movie Culture in the Age of Reagan, returns to recommend Victor Serge's recently discovered Notebooks from 1936-47, in which the great communist writer lived in exile, from Paris to Mexico.

Photo: © Tina Chiou

This is the sixth episode in our series on LA and Southern California writers, artists and filmmakers. This episode of the LARB Radio Hour is supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov. Any findings, opinions, or conclusions contained herein are not necessarily those of the California Arts Council.