
Interior Chinatown
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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Joel de la Fuente
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By:
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Charles Yu
About this listen
A 2020 National Book Award Winner
"One of the funniest books of the year...a delicious, ambitious Hollywood satire." (The Washington Post)
From the infinitely inventive author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe comes a deeply personal novel about race, pop culture, immigration, assimilation, and escaping the roles we are forced to play.
Willis Wu doesn’t perceive himself as a protagonist even 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 he is always 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. At least that’s what he has been told, time and time again. Except by one person, his mother. Who says to him: Be more.
Playful but heartfelt, a send-up of Hollywood tropes and Asian stereotypes, Interior Chinatown is Charles Yu’s most moving, daring, and masterly novel yet.
"Fresh and beautiful...Interior Chinatown represents yet another stellar destination in the journey of a sui generis author of seemingly limitless skill and ambition." (The New York Times Book Review)
©2020 Charles Yu (P)2020 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"I’m a big fan of Charles Yu’s writing because of his wit and inventiveness. These talents are front and center in the brilliant and hilarious Interior Chinatown, which satirizes the racist imagination and brings us deep into the humanity of those who suffer from - and struggle against - dehumanization." (Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer)
"Interior Chinatown is wrenching, hilarious, sharp, surreal, and above all, original. This is an extraordinary book by an immensely talented writer." (Emily St. John Mandel, National Book Award finalist and author of The Glass Hotel)
"Conflates history, sociology, and ethnography with the timeless evils of racism, sexism, and elitism in a multigenerational epic that’s both rollicking entertainment and scathing commentary.... Ingeniously draws on real-life Hollywood.... [The book’s] sobering reality will resonate with savvy readers." (Terry Hong, Booklist, starred review)
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By: Jaimy Gordon
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America Is in the Heart: A Personal History (AmazonClassics Edition)
- By: Carlos Bulosan
- Narrated by: Reuben Uy
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Carlos Bulosan’s idealism and ambition would seem to position him for certain success in America, even given how young he is when he first makes the journey from the Philippines. However, after arriving in Seattle, employers are far more concerned with his Filipino background than they are with his character. Low-paying jobs - and an uncertain future - remain his daily reality.
By: Carlos Bulosan
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The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Anna Fields
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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For more than a half century, Father Damien Modeste has served his beloved people, the Ojibwe, on the remote reservation of Little No Horse. Now, nearing the end of his life, Father Damien dreads the discovery of his physical identity, for he is a woman who has lived as a man. To complicate his fears, his quiet life changes when a troubled colleague comes to the reservation to investigate the life of the perplexing, difficult, possibly false saint Sister Leopolda.
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This is Pulitzer material, folks
- By Malcolm on 02-03-05
By: Louise Erdrich
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Fortune Smiles
- Stories
- By: Adam Johnson
- Narrated by: W. Morgan Sheppard, Johnathan McClain, Cassandra Campbell, and others
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his acclaimed novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, Adam Johnson is one of America’s most provocative and powerful authors. Critics have compared him to Kurt Vonnegut, David Mitchell, and George Saunders, but Johnson’s new book will only further his reputation as one of our most original writers. Subtly surreal, darkly comic, both hilarious and heartbreaking, Fortune Smiles is a major collection of stories that gives voice to the perspectives we don’t often hear, while offering something rare in fiction: a new way of looking at the world.
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Half Full or Half Empty
- By Mel on 10-29-15
By: Adam Johnson
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Blackouts
- A Novel
- By: Justin Torres
- Narrated by: Ozzie Rodriguez, Torian Brackett
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay—playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized—has a project to pass along. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried.
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meh
- By Thomas E Flint on 10-28-24
By: Justin Torres
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Swamplandia!
- By: Karen Russell
- Narrated by: Arielle Sitrick, David Ackroyd
- Length: 13 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
The Bigtree alligator-wrestling dynasty is in decline, and Swamplandia!, their island home and gator-wrestling theme park, formerly number one in the region, is swiftly being encroached upon by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, has just died; her sister, Ossie, has fallen in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, who may or may not be an actual ghost; and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, who dreams of becoming a scholar, has just defected to the World of Darkness.
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Sometimes Brilliant, Sometimes Disappointing
- By Suzn F on 02-05-11
By: Karen Russell
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The Leavers
- A Novel
- By: Lisa Ko
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 14 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
One morning, Deming Guo's mother, an undocumented Chinese immigrant named Polly, goes to her job at the nail salon and never comes home. No one can find any trace of her. With his mother gone, 11-year-old Deming is left with no one to care for him. He is eventually adopted by two white college professors who move him from the Bronx to a small town upstate. They rename him Daniel Wilkinson in their efforts to make him over into their version of an "all-American boy".
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Overly dramatic narration.
- By susan sompayrac on 06-27-17
By: Lisa Ko
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
- By: Junot Diaz
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Staci Snell
- Length: 16 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Oscar is a sweet but disastrously overweight ghetto nerd who—from the New Jersey home he shares with his old world mother and rebellious sister—dreams of becoming the Dominican J.R.R. Tolkien and, most of all, finding love. But Oscar may never get what he wants. Blame the fukú—a curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations, following them on their epic journey from Santo Domingo to the USA.
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Wondrous Book!!!
- By Robert on 06-22-12
By: Junot Diaz
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I Hope This Finds You Well
- A Novel
- By: Natalie Sue
- Narrated by: Nasim Pedrad
- Length: 12 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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As far as Jolene is concerned, her interactions with her colleagues should start and end with her official duties as an admin for Supershops, Inc. Unfortunately, her irritating, incompetent coworkers don’t seem to understand the importance of boundaries. Her secret to survival? She vents her grievances in petty email postscripts, then changes the text color to white so no one can see. That is until one of her secret messages is exposed. Her punishment: sensitivity training (led by the suspiciously friendly HR guy, Cliff) and rigorous email restrictions.
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I Hope You Listen to This Book
- By Amazon Customer on 11-24-24
By: Natalie Sue
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Hell of a Book
- A Novel
- By: Jason Mott
- Narrated by: JD Jackson, Ronald Peet
- Length: 9 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.
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Four Stars for Content, One More for...
- By Paul Frandano on 08-12-21
By: Jason Mott
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Theft
- A Novel
- By: Abdulrazak Gurnah
- Narrated by: Ashley Zhangazha
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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At the turn of the twenty-first century, three young people come of age in Tanzania. Karim returns to his sleepy hometown after university with new swagger and ambition. Fauzia glimpses in him a chance at escape from a smothering upbringing. The two of them offer a haven to Badar, a poor boy still unsure if the future holds anything for him at all. As tourism, technology, and unexpected opportunities and perils reach their quiet corner of the world, bringing, each arrives at a different understanding of what it means to take your fate into your own hands.
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Bader
- By Paul on 03-21-25
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The Sympathizer
- A Novel
- By: Viet Thanh Nguyen
- Narrated by: Francois Chau
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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The winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, as well as seven other awards, and now an HBO® Original Limited Series on Max, The Sympathizer has sold over one million copies worldwide and is one of the most acclaimed books of the 21st century. With the pace and suspense of a thriller and prose that has been compared to Graham Greene and Vladimir Nabokov, The Sympathizer is a sweeping epic of love and betrayal.
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Recommended With No Reservations
- By SG68 on 05-13-25
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The Round House
- A Novel
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Gary Farmer
- Length: 12 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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One Sunday in the spring of 1988, a woman living on a reservation in North Dakota is attacked. The details of the crime are slow to surface as Geraldine Coutts is traumatized and reluctant to relive or reveal what happened, either to the police or to her husband, Bazil, and 13-year-old son, Joe. In one day, Joe's life is irrevocably transformed. He tries to heal his mother, but she will not leave her bed and slips into an abyss of solitude. Increasingly alone, Joe finds himself thrust prematurely into an adult world for which he is ill prepared.
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Heavy in My Heart
- By Mel on 01-02-13
By: Louise Erdrich
excellent
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If you have ever, for any reason, been curious about Asian American struggle, or Chinatown, or false stereotypes or racism or all the things that still get oft unsaid because people are too callous or too ignorant or too afraid…
This will help you.
This will heal the scars you may not have known you had.
Everything good you’ve heard about this book is true
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Glad I stuck with it
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Interesting weaving of various elements.
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Just what this Filipina-American needed at this moment
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Stick with it
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The premise of the book is fairly meta, but not in an obnoxious way. It's played for laughs but also cerebrally, forcing us to think about the ways we perform our identities versus what reality might say otherwise.
Funny, insightful, and absolutely heartwrenching
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Love love love this book
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The emotional ties the characters had to being Chinese.
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Quintessential American story from a certain point of view
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