On Jan. 18, author Curtis Chin visited the Mandel Humanities Center to give a talk on his first book and memoir “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant.” The memoir, published in October 2023, details Chin’s experience and challenges growing up as an Asian American, queer man in Detroit. He was a first-generation college student at the University of Michigan as a creative writing major.

Chin started by recounting his experiences leading up to writing his book. Prior to publishing the memoir, he worked on poetry in New York City. He later wrote screenplays in Los Angeles and scripts for Disney Channel through the ABC Disney Fellowship. 

When his father passed away in a car accident, Chin returned to Michigan to sell the long-time family business, which sold ten million eggrolls during its reign. Following ten years of working on social justice documentaries, Chin then chose to write his book as a project dedicated to his family. “You can’t really know the person’s family without the family’s story,” Chin said. “Writing this book was a culmination of all these different things.”

Grappling with his identity as a gay man is a central theme in Chin’s book, particularly because of how difficult it was for him to come out in the ’80s. He explained how his generation of gay men expected to have a short life span, lacked LGBTQ+ role models, and were not regarded with respect. “No one in my family ever said anything anti-gay, not even my grandma, who spoke some pretty offensive things about race and gender. But no one said anything positive about being gay either,” Chin said. “That left a big question mark, in my mind: How would they react if it turned out to be true that I was like that?”

During the event, he read out chapters A6 and M7 of his book, which is structured like a Chinese restaurant menu. Chin centers his book around his family’s restaurant because it was central to his connection with his family and hometown. “I’d like to think about not just any Chinese restaurant, but the Chinese restaurant,” he said. It was his haven that illustrated the concept “for here or to go” that Chin said encapsulated his whole life. While he had his whole childhood within this restaurant, Detroit was a city falling apart and riddled with gang violence.

Chin is grateful for the success of his book, estimating to have done 70 events for his book since its release and expecting 80 to 90 more. He concluded, “Yes, this is my memoir, but it is also a thank you to my parents for the sacrifices they made for us, and it’s also a hat down to my hometown, Detroit.”