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As Charles Yu wrote “Interior Chinatown,” he worried readers wouldn’t be interested in a satirical novel about how Hollywood and society trap Asian Americans in stereotypical roles.
They almost never get to be the leading man. Instead, they get to be “Generic Asian Man Number Three / Delivery Guy.”
“I wondered if I would run into people who would say, ‘What is the big deal is it really such a big problem?’” recalls Yu, who joins the Los Angeles Times Book Club on May 27. “I thought I’d get skepticism. Does this story really need to be told?”
The author’s self-doubt turned out to be off the mark. “Interior Chinatown” received rave reviews and won the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction in November. And after the pandemic triggered increased anti-Asian harassment and violence, Yu’s witty but pointed indictment of prejudice has resonated with readers in a way he never envisioned.
Viet Thanh Nguyen talks about The Committed - Los Angeles Times latimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from latimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s debut novel “The Sympathizer” introduced readers to its unnamed protagonist, a half-Vietnamese, half-French communist double agent navigating life, love, loyalty and espionage in Los Angeles after the fall of Saigon.
In Nguyen’s sequel, “The Committed,” his narrator is “still a man of two faces and two minds.” But now he is also “a revolutionary without a revolution,” a refugee in 1980s Paris who is grappling with politics, ideologies, and himself.
“I wasn’t done with his story,” says Nguyen, who joins the Los Angeles Times Book Club on March 10. “I’m very cognizant of the fact that people read “The Sympathizer” as a Vietnam War novel and me as a Vietnamese American writing about the Vietnam War.”