Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin is paired with A&C Super, a friendly Williamsburg super store, serving amazing bread, pastries, coffee & sandwiches, owned by Chrissa and Abby. We paired these two together as a nod to Chrissa's background growing in a restaurant family in Seattle's Chinatown. Both highlight the importance of community
PICK UP INSTRUCTIONS: Please note that you will need to pick this up at Pecking House located at 292 Leonard Street Brooklyn NY 11211. See here for their store hours and details. When picking up, please mention you have pre-purchased on our website, and share your confirmation number and name.
Book Description (Hardcover)
This “vivid, moving, funny, and heartfelt” memoir tells the story of Curtis Chin’s time growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in 1980’s Detroit (Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers).
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.