Join us for a “vivid, moving, funny, and heartfelt” memoir that tells the story of Curtis Chin’s time growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in 1980’s Detroit (Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers).
Nineteen eighties Detroit was a volatile place to live, but above the fray stood a safe haven: Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, where anyone—from the city’s first Black mayor to the local drag queens, from a big-time Hollywood star to elderly Jewish couples—could sit down for a warm, home-cooked meal. Here was where, beneath a bright-red awning and surrounded by his multigenerational family, filmmaker and activist Curtis Chin came of age; where he learned to embrace his identity as a gay ABC, or American-born Chinese; where he navigated the divided city’s spiraling misfortunes; and where—between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less-savory culinary concoctions—he realized just how much he had to offer to the world, to his beloved family, and to himself.
Served up by the cofounder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and structured around the very menu that graced the tables of Chung’s, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is both a memoir and an invitation: to step inside one boy’s childhood oasis, scoot into a vinyl booth, and grow up with him—and perhaps even share something off the secret menu.
This event is co-sponsored by the following organizations:
Chinese American Museum
PFLAG San Gabriel Valley / API
The University of Michigan Alumni Association - Los Angeles
The co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in New York City, Curtis Chin served as the non-profits’ first Executive Director. He went on to write for network and cable television before transitioning to social justice documentaries. Chin has screened his films at over 600 venues in sixteen countries. He has written for CNN, Bon Appetit and the Emancipator/Boston Globe. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Chin has received awards from ABC/Disney Television, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and more. His memoir, "Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant" will be published by Little, Brown in Fall 2023. His essay in Bon Appetit was just selected for Best Food Writing in America 2023.
JEFF YANG has been observing, exploring, and writing about the Asian American community for over thirty years. He launched one of the first Asian American national magazines, A. Magazine, in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, and now writes frequently for CNN, Quartz, Slate, and elsewhere. He has written/edited three books—Jackie Chan’s New York Times bestselling memoir I M JACKIE CHAN: My Life in Action; ONCE UPPN A TIME IN CHINA, a history of the cinemas of Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Mainland; and EASTERN STANDARD TIME: A Guide to Asian Influence on American Culture, and recently coauthored the New York Times bestselling RISE: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now. His next book, THE GOLDEN SCREEN: The Movies That Made Asian America, will be a lead title for Hachette in October 2023. He most recently wrote and produced the feature film A GREAT DIVIDE, about an Asian American film confronting Covid-era xenophobia after moving to small town Wyoming, starring Ken Jeong and Jae Suh Park. He lives in Los Angeles, CA.
