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?