"Interior Chinatown" follows a man who lives in the background of a police procedural until his luck changes — a trajectory that resonates with Jimmy O. Yang

The title takes a shot at another threadworm screen trope about Chinatowns, as hotbeds of crime and corruption, captured long ago in the classic line: Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.

All of that informs the fresh commentary and characterization of Charles Yu’s “Interior Chinatown,” based on his own novel of the same name. What if the people pushed into the periphery were aware of it, and how can they move organically into the main story?