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Second Saturday Readers

Everything I Learned, I Learned In A Chinese Restaurant

LVDL's monthly book discussion that meets on the second Saturday of each month. Copies of the book are available at the Circulation Desk.

This month’s title is Everything I Learned, I Learned In A Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin.

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. 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

Copies of the book will be available at the Circulation Desk. 

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