Allen is Ming-Chen Wu’s housemate during graduate school. Like Wu, Allen is originally from Taiwan. After the Attack on Pearl Harbor, some local people violently beat Allen in retaliation, ignorantly believing that Allen is of Japanese descent (and also ignorantly believing that all people of Japanese people are to blame for the attack). Though Allen goes on to have a family and becomes quite successful, he suffers headaches for the rest of his life because of the attack, and he eventually dies by suicide.
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Allen Character Timeline in Interior Chinatown
The timeline below shows where the character Allen appears in Interior Chinatown. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Act 4: Striving Immigrant
...from Japan, Kim and Park are from Korea, Singh is a Punjabi Sikh man, and Allen Chen is from Taiwan. Wu is a teaching assistant, and the university pays him a...
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When Ming-Chen Wu comes home one day, his housemates tell him that Allen is in the hospital—someone beat him up and told him, “This is for Pearl Harbor.”...
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After graduation, Ming-Chen Wu falls out of contact with everyone but Allen. They write letters, and Wu takes pleasure in hearing about Allen’s academic success. He gets...
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A couple years after Allen’s death, his daughter Christine graduates with honors from Stanford. She gives a speech in which...
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