Like many kids whose family owned a restaurant, Curtis Chin grew up doing his homework in the dining room, watching his parents work, learning how to make dishes on the menu, filling water glasses and greeting customers.
Chin’s memoir “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant,” which comes out Tuesday, is a vivid tale of his childhood growing up at Chung’s, a historic and longstanding destination in Detroit’s Cass Corridor. Chin paints a vibrant picture of life inside the restaurant with his grandmother, parents and five siblings while the harsh realities of crime-ridden Cass Avenue stayed (somewhat) at bay beyond the restaurant’s secured front door.
An award-winning writer, Chin co-founded the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and has directed documentaries and produced the film “Vincent Who” about the 1982 murder of Detroiter Vincent Chin.
In his memoir, Chin recounts tales of everyone from prostitutes to politicians visiting Chung’s to dine on fried egg rolls (they sold 4,000 a week), pork fried rice and almond boneless chicken, or warm up from the harsh, gray Detroit winters with some hot Chinese tea. Mayor Coleman Young was a regular, and his go-to dish was lobster egg foo yung, the most expensive item on the menu.
Readers can relive, through Chin’s perspective, major moments in the city’s late 20th century time line, from the Detroit Tigers World Series win to the killing of neighborhood acquaintance Vincent Chin. Little Curtis, the third of six children, was just like any other kid in the area, drinking orange Faygo, reading comic strips in the local newspaper and attending Burton School across the street.
More:40 years later: How Vincent Chin’s death sparked a civil rights movement
Outside of the restaurant and the Cass Corridor, the University of Michigan grad retells his family’s eventual move to Troy, his experiences with racism there, and later, his struggle to come to terms with his sexuality. Chin also writes about finding a second family…
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