New memoir tells tales of family, identity and growing up in Detroit's Cass Corridor

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 at a different restaurant while in college, Drake's in Ann Arbor.

While Chung's closed more than 20 years ago and Chin has been living on the West Coast, many of the themes in "Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant" — racism, LGBTQ+ identity, immigration and Detroit's historic Chinatown — are timely now.

"We live in a very divided country right now, we have these silos where people don't talk to each other," Chin told The Detroit News during a recent visit to Detroit. "Chinese restaurants are one of the few places where you actually might encounter somebody from a different race, class, sexual orientation or religion, right?"

He said he used humor in his book to talk about some of these weightier topics.

"I don't want us to avoid these issues, but I want to be able to talk about them in a friendlier way ... it's like, come for the egg rolls, but stay for the talk on racism," he said. "I don't want us to not acknowledge these pasts but I want it so that people aren't necessarily hurt and angry by these things."

More:Where to get Chinese dumplings in Metro Detroit

Chin said that when he started working on his memoir, he was writing more of a comedy about a happy-go-lucky kid whose family was in the restaurant business and dealt with issues like a mean grandmother, perhaps, or the Chinese mafia.

"There were far more mafia stories," he says of an early draft. "But then COVID happened, and George Floyd was murdered and there was this rise in Asian-American hate crimes. I thought that, well, maybe my book can sort of speak to that moment with all these ideas of identity formation and coming out."

The engaging page-turner has already received heaps of national press and has been named on several "most anticipated" lists from publications like Time Magazine, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, W Magazine and Eater.

Chin says he hopes his memoir could have a future life in another medium, maybe as a television series, and he's got another 20 stories from his time growing up in Detroit, enough to write a second book.

His working title for that, if it happens?

"Leftovers."

mbaetens@detroitnews.com

"Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant" by Curtis Chin

Oct. 17

Little, Brown and Company

"Detroit's Chinatown" exhibit

10 a.m.-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. and 1-5 p.m. Sun. through Jan. 7

Detroit Historical Museum

5401 Woodward, Detroit

(313) 833-1805 detroithistorical.org

Museum admission is $10, $8 for seniors, military and first responders, $6 for children, $35 per household and free for Detroit Historical Society members

Book Talk with Curtis Chin

2-4 p.m. Nov. 12 at Detroit Historical Museum

Tickets on sale Oct. 12 at detroithistorical.org/things-do/events-calendar/events-listing/curtis-chin-book-talk

For more appearances visit curtisfromdetroit.com