Author(s)

Yusen Guo ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Beijing International Studies University, Beijing, 100024, China

Corresponding Author

Yusen Guo

ABSTRACT

This essay examines Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown through Erving Goffman's framework of front stage, back stage, and off-stage to analyze how Asian American identity is scripted and contested. Focusing on the Wu family, it traces three generations negotiating the pressures of racial performance. Ming-Chen Wu, the first generation, enters the United States with aspirations but becomes trapped in stereotypical Chinatown roles such as Sifu or Old Asian Man, showing how survival often requires conformity. His son, Willis Wu, initially internalizes the same logic, aspiring to become Kung Fu Guy, but gradually realizes the limits of such roles. His courtroom speech exposes both complicity and resistance, revealing the difficulty of escaping externally imposed scripts. The third generation, Phoebe, grows up beyond Chinatown, embodying the possibility of self-definition unburdened by inherited stereotypes. By juxtaposing these trajectories, the essay argues that Interior Chinatown critiques the persistence of racial scripts while envisioning cross-generational mobility not simply as economic advancement but as the symbolic and cultural freedom to live beyond performance.

KEYWORDS

Interior Chinatown, Charles Yu, Front Stage, Back Stage, Off-Stage, Generational Mobility

CITE THIS PAPER

Yusen Guo, Breaking the Script: Cross-Generational Upward Mobility in Interior Chinatown. Lecture Notes on Language and Literature (2025) Vol. 8: 104-110. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/langl.2025.080416.

REFERENCES

[1] Nur, M. Taiwanese American Discrimination in Charles Yu's Novel Interior Chinatown [D]. Universitas Islam Negeri Maulana Malik Ibrahim, 2021.
[2] Yuan, Y. The Unrealizable American Dream: On Charles Yu's Interior Chinatown [J]. Ostrava Journal of English Philology, 2023, 15(1).
[3] Yubing, C. Identity Performances and Ethical Choices in Interior Chinatown [J]. Shanghai Culture, 2018, 2: 33–45.
[4] Sun, L., Wei, Y. The "Mystery" of American Chinatown: An Interdisciplinary Study Between Literary Representation and Social Reality [J]. Journal of Language, Literature and Culture, 2025: 1–11.
[5] Serpa, S., Ferreira, C. M. Goffman's Backstage Revisited: Conceptual Relevance in Contemporary Social Interactions [J]. International Journal of Social Science Studies, 2018, 6: 74.
[6] Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life[M]. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1959.
[7] Cole, Nicki Lisa, Ph.D. Goffman's Front-Stage and Backstage Behavior[D]. ThoughtCo, Apr. 16, 2025.
[8] Yu, Charles. Interior Chinatown[M]. Pantheon Books, 2020.
[9] Manning, P. Erving Goffman and Modern Sociology [M]. John Wiley & Sons, 2013.
[10] Burns, T. Erving Goffman [M]. Routledge, 2002.

Sponsors, Associates, and Links

---

• Journal of Language Testing & Assessment
  
  
• Information and Knowledge Management
  
  
• Military and Armament Science
  
  
• Media and Communication Research
  
  
• Journal of Human Movement Science
  
  
• Art and Performance Letters
  
  
• Lecture Notes on History
  
  
• Philosophy Journal
  
  
• Science of Law Journal
  
  
• Journal of Political Science Research
  
  
• Journal of Sociology and Ethnology
  
  
• Advances in Broadcasting