Interior Chinatown

One of Willis’s fears is that his life will turn out exactly like his father’s. What parallel or repeating patterns occur in the lives of characters in Interior Chinatown, and how do these patterns highlight the significance of Willis’s decisions about his life near the end of the novel?

Teaching Suggestion: Students may tend to focus on just Willis’s story and how it compares and contrasts with his father’s. Consider encouraging them to see the broader patterns in the novel’s depictions of characters. You might ask students to think about characters like Older Brother, Old Mr. Fong, Karen, and Dorothy. Students may also want to think about things like the inclusive language used to discuss the trajectories of both Asian men and Asian women in this text. The final section of the prompt question is likely to be where students struggle most. It is easy to say that Willis clearly wants to break free of the generational cycles he sees playing out around him, but it is more difficult to ascribe a meaning to this. You might prompt students to think about what Older Brother and Karen have in common since these characters have already paved a path for Willis to follow, and you might ask students why Phoebe’s character is so important to Willis’s thinking about his future.

Differentiation Suggestion: Because effectively answering this prompt requires comparing and contrasting the stories of many characters, students with attentional and executive function differences may benefit from assistance in keeping their thoughts organized. You might suggest to them that they create a chart or a parallel series of timelines where they can track character trajectories side-by-side. As they move on to thinking about the significance of this data to Willis’s own decisions at the end of the novel, you might ask them to create Venn diagrams showing what important characters have in common and what distinguishes them from one another as a way to highlight for students the factors that make Older Brother, Karen, and Phoebe able to step away from the generational cycles that almost trap Willis. If students are answering this prompt in written form, graphic organizers of this sort, supplemented with some annotations, might serve as an alternative assignment form for those who struggle with written expression.