Interior Chinatown

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What is the difference between perspective and point of view? Why might an author choose to use a point of view that does not match the narrative’s perspective?

Teaching Suggestion: Interior Chinatown uses the second person point of view, but its perspective is consistently Willis’s. Yu has good reasons for employing this strategy, but it may be quite confusing for students initially. This prompt is intended to ensure that students understand the distinction between point of view and perspective and have done some preliminary thinking about the various ways these two elements can be manipulated to create different effects.

• This 5-minute video from TED-Ed explores the differing impacts of first-, second-, and third-person points of view.
• This 10-minute video from Ignited Ink Writing discusses the benefits of second-person point of view as well as what makes it so difficult to execute well.

2. What are the conventions of a screenplay? How are screenplays similar to and different from novels?

Teaching Suggestion: Depending on their backgrounds, students may be knowledgeable about screenplay formatting and structure or know next to nothing. If your sense is that they have little knowledge on this subject, you might offer them the resources listed below before they attempt to respond to this prompt. If they are responding to this prompt in writing, they may benefit from at least some discussion time devoted to the second of the two questions, as hearing many different ideas and perspectives will eventually enrich their understanding of how Yu cleverly combines the conventions of these two forms in Interior Chinatown.

• In this 10-minute video, actress Makayla Lysiak explains each element in the formatting of screenplays.
• This 7-minute video from The Script Lab explains the conventions of dramatic structure in screenplays.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

Have you ever felt trapped in a role that other people “cast” you in? How did this make you feel about yourself and about the other people involved? (Or, if it has never happened to you, how do you imagine this situation would feel?) What about your own personality and background do you suspect makes you more or less vulnerable to being “typecast”?

Teaching Suggestion: The intention of this prompt is not to solicit deeply personal stories but to ask students to think about how situations like Willis’s feel and about their own relative vulnerability to the pressure to conform to stereotypes. Nonetheless, some students may choose to share very personal stories and feelings—you may wish to decide ahead of time whether you want to head this possibility off, accommodate it, or even encourage it, depending on your individual classroom situation.