Jeff Yang and Phil Yu present an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America.
What's up, podcast listeners? We've got another episode of our podcast They Call Us Bruce. (Almost) each week, my good friend, writer/columnist Jeff Yang and I host an unfiltered conversation about what's happening in Asian America, with a strong focus on media, entertainment and popular culture.
In this episode, we welcome writer Charles Yu, showrunner/executive producer of the Hulu series Interior Chinatown, adapted from his award-winning novel of the same name. We discuss the challenges of taking a somewhat indescribable and seemingly un-adaptable book and adapting it into a 10-episode prestige series; how Interior Chinatown is actually like Pokemon; and the fun of deconstructing the TV tropes of the police procedural "Chinatown Episode."
Charles Yu Wins National Book Award for 'Interior Chinatown'
Congratulations to Charles Yu, who won the National Book Award for fiction on Wednesday for his mind-bending satire, Interior Chinatown, a sendup of Hollywood and Asian-American stereotypes. The novel, written in the form of a screenplay, features an aspiring actor named Willis Wu who confronts casual racism and the cruel hierarchies of the entertainment world in his quest to graduate from bit roles as the "Delivery Guy" or "Silent Henchman." The judges praised the novel as "wonderfully inventive" and "by turns hilarious and flat out heartbreaking." Watch the announcement here (skip to 1:50:17).
What We Lost in the Museum of Chinese in America Fire
Last Thursday night, 70 Mulberry Street in Manhattan caught on fire, likely destroying much of the Museum of Chinese in America's collection of some eighty-five thousand items -- a trove of priceless, irreplaceable artifacts from Chinese American history, salvaged, preserved and archived over several generations. If you'd like to contribute to the museum's recovery effort, donate here: MOCA Archives Fire Recovery.
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Trump's immigration rule could disproportionately hurt Asian immigrants
The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to begin implementing new "wealth test" rules making it easier to deny immigrants residency or admission to the United States because they have used or might use public-assistance programs -- standards that could create serious barriers for many Asian immigrants. This article, published last fall, outlines how these new exclusionary rules could significantly affect the Asian American community.
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Charles Yu on The Daily Show
Writer Charles Yu was on The Daily Show to discuss Interior Chinatown (on shelves now!), his new novel about race, pop culture and escaping the roles we are forced to play. He talks about screen representation and the insidious divide-and-conquer strategy of the model minority myth.
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HBO And JuVee Productions To Develop 'House Of Chow' From Ken Cheng
Viola Davis and Julius Tennon's JuVee Production is teaming with HBO to develop the comedy House of Chow from writer Ken Cheng. "Based on Cheng's experiences growing up in a restaurant kitchen, House of Chow is a comedy about the reluctant partnership that forms between estranged, thirtysomething siblings Vicky and Charlie Chow. Both realize that the best way to salvage their disappointing and dysfunctional lives is to revive their family's old Chinese restaurant and turn it into something it's never been: a success. To do that, all they'll need to do is exploit the gullible foodies of L.A. into believing they're something they’ve never been: happy to be there. The comedy untangles the intertwined quirks of culture, sex, family and food that are part of everyday life for many first-gen, blue-collar, "immigrant Americans" and does it in the sexiest place imaginable: a hole-in-the-wall restaurant with a B-grade on the window."
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Bong Joon Ho on making ‘Parasite,’ then making history
I really enjoyed Kim Masters' interview with Parasite director Bong Joon Ho (and his translator Sharon Choi) on KCRW's The Business. Bong tells some fun stories about the making of Parasite and offers some new details into the upcoming HBO limited series adaptation of his acclaimed film. Plus, he's charming as hell.
