EVERYTHING I LEARNED, I LEARNED in a CHINESE RESTAURANT: A MEMOIR (audiobook) by Curtis Chin

Published in 2023 by Little, Brown, and Company.
Read by the author, Curtis Chin
Duration: 8 hours, 12 minutes.
Unabridged.

Curtis Chin grew up in the 1980s in and around Detroit, Michigan. His immediate family and his extended family shared ownership in a Chinese restaurant in Detroit's Chinatown. Chin spent a considerable chunk of his early life working, eating, and doing homework in the restaurant.

Chin tells about how his family ended up in Detroit, how his parents met and got married, the sometimes uncomfortable extended family dynamic, and the decline of Chung's Cantonese Cuisine's once vibrant neighborhood.

There is also plenty of discussion about school from kindergarten through a four year degree at the University of Michigan. These parts of the story often discussed the racial dynamics of going to school in Detroit's majority minority school system. Later, when the family joined the white flight to the suburbs, there was a new dynamic of going to a school where there were almost no minority students. On top of that, the family was clearly not welcome in the suburbs because they were not white.

As Chin grew older, he had another issue that had his attention more than the ins and outs of the shifting racial currents - his sexual orientation.

Chin starts this part with an amusing story of how he and a cousin snuck out of the restaurant to go into a store near the restaurant that sold porn magazines to take a look. It's an enlightening story for a couple of reasons. It shows how the neighborhood around the restaurant had declined. But, Chin knows something is different when he is more interested in the magazines featuring men than the ones featuring women.

The family restaurant in 1976
Photo from Detroit News archives.

From that point, the book focuses heavily on Chin's struggles with who he can safely come out to and how to meet a man while constantly being surrounded by a very traditional family. Chin often wonders how his family will react when he finally comes out to them.

I have two big criticisms of the book. The first is that we never find out how his family reacts when he comes out to them. He worries about that throughout the second half of the book and he almost tells them at one point at the very end. The second is that considering the title of the book, I found it disappointing that there is no summary at the end of the book that points out the life lessons he learned in a Chinese restaurant.

Not a bad book, but I was disappointed by the two omissions that I mentioned. I rate this audiobook 3 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  EVERYTHING I LEARNED, I LEARNED in a CHINESE RESTAURANT: A MEMOIR (audiobook) by Curtis Chin.