Book review of Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin

The titular eatery in documentarian and activist Curtis Chin’s charming and contemplative debut memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant, is Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine, which Chin’s great-grandfather opened in 1940. Until its closure in 2000, the restaurant was a beloved fixture of Detroit’s former Chinatown. Even as town’s fortunes shifted and adjusted, Chung’s persevered as a place to get scrumptious meals (particularly their well-known almond boneless hen), play a rousing sport of mahjong and mingle with folks from all walks of life.

With a easy writing model and appealingly conversational tone, Chin leads readers by means of the early years of his life, starting with “Appetizers and Soups” and ending with “The Fortune Cookie.” After all, he writes, “The important lessons that guided me through my childhood came served like a big Chinese banquet . . . a chorus of sweet and sour, salty and savory, sugary and spicy flavors that counseled me toward a well-led, and well-fed, life.”

Achieving that well-fed life was initially difficult, because of Chin’s feeling that he didn’t match in anyplace: at house as the center youngster of six; on the restaurant, the place he felt missed amid the high-energy hustle-bustle; and in school, the place he contended with racism. And for a few years, he was hesitant to return out, noting, “No one in my family ever said anything anti-gay . . . but no one said anything positive about being gay either.” 

Readers will root for the writer as he strikes alongside his journey of self-acceptance, which was, he notes with dryly humorous empathy for his former self, not with out missteps: His eighth grade New Year’s decision was “not to be gay,” and in highschool, he “became the Asian Alex P. Keaton” to point out that he was “as apple pie as anyone” in college.

Ultimately, Chin finds a group of kindred spirits on the University of Michigan who assist him assert his identification as a liberal homosexual man, uncover his writerly abilities and achieve new perspective about his dad and mom and the household enterprise. Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is an engrossing chronicle of a metropolis, a restaurant, a household and a boy’s path from anxious uncertainty to hard-won confidence.