Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant: A Memoir, Curtis Chin

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Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant

A Memoir
by Curtis Chin
Hardcover | October 17, 2023

In 1980s Detroit, as the city fractured under racial tension, economic collapse, and political change, one place remained steady: Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine.

In this vivid, funny, and deeply moving memoir, Curtis Chin recounts growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in his family’s restaurant, a beloved neighborhood institution where the booths were vinyl, the portions generous, and everyone was welcome. From the city’s first Black mayor to drag queens, Hollywood visitors, and elderly Jewish regulars, Chung’s served as both a refuge and a crossroads, a place where community gathered even as the city outside struggled.

Structured around the menu that once sat on every table, Chin’s story unfolds dish by dish, blending food, family, and identity. Between almond boneless chicken and sweet-and-sour pork, he comes of age, navigates queerness and belonging, witnesses Detroit’s upheavals, and learns how to claim his voice as an activist, artist, and writer.

Written by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, this memoir is both a personal history and a love letter: to chosen family, to working-class immigrant life, to queer survival, and to the unexpected places where we learn who we are. It invites readers to pull up a chair, share a meal, and recognize how profoundly ordinary spaces can shape extraordinary lives.