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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 spiralling misfortunes; and where-between helpings of almond boneless chicken, sweet-and-sour pork, and some of his own, less-savoury 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.

About the Author
A cofounder of the Asian American Writers' Workshop in New York City, Curtis Chin served as the nonprofit's first executive director. He went on to write for network television before transitioning to social-justice documentaries. Chin has screened his films at over six hundred venues in sixteen countries. He has written for CNN, Bon Appetit, and the Boston Globe's Emancipator. A graduate of the University of Michigan and a former visiting scholar at New York University, Chin has received awards from ABC/Disney Television, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and more. He can be found at CurtisfromDetroit.com.


Book Information
ISBN 9780316507752
Author Curtis Chin
Format Paperback
Page Count 304
Imprint Little, Brown & Company
Publisher Little, Brown & Company
Weight(grams) 280g
Dimensions(mm) 208mm * 136mm * 22mm