Author Talk - Curtis Chin: Everything I Learned I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant

Join the Library, Loyalty Bookstores, and the Mayor's Office of Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs for a conversation with Curtis Chin about his new memoir Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant. In conversation with MOAPIA Director Ben de Guzman, Chin will share from his book about growing up Chinese-American and gay in Detroit in the 1980's.

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.

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