In “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant,” author Curtis Chin describes coming of age in Detroit’s Cass Corridor Chinatown neighborhood. In the ’70s and ’80s, his parents ran a popular Chinese restaurant (Chung’s, which was open from 1940-2000), where Chin spent many hours working while also absorbing the community around him, an experience that included coming to terms with his sexuality and navigating unique challenges related to his status as a Chinese-American child born to first-generation immigrant parents.
The Washington Post and Time magazine have declared the book a “must-read,” citing Chin’s candor and frequently humorous reflections on what was clearly a sometimes tumultuous upbringing. For all the light moments he recounts, the memoir is set against the backdrop of Detroit during his formative years, when the city saw far more everyday violence in working-class neighborhoods like Chin’s than we see now — by 18, he’d known five people who had been murdered. Still, “Everything I Learned” is a “love letter to my hometown,” Chin says.
“They’re going to learn about an Asian American family, but in actuality, they’re going to learn about Detroit — and also America — at that time period,” he tells Pride Source. “A lot of the issues we deal with now, we see the origins from that era.”
Hearing Chin describe his growing-up era, which was primarily the 1980s, can feel a bit unsettling. For him, it was “just normal that people would die around you and that buildings would burn down around you, so I don’t have another frame of reference. I mean, you’re a kid. I didn’t necessarily stress out about it.”
Throughout the book, Chin touches on stories that will resonate with Michiganders who experienced life in Detroit in the ’80s, which he describes as a pivotal time period for the city. Chin reflects on Detroit’s first Black mayor, Coleman Young, who served the city for two…
Read the full article here