Overview
Being American is not about fitting into a single identity. It is about participating in a shared experiment — one shaped by immigrants, different cultures, competing histories, and the belief that people from many backgrounds can still build a common future together.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin is a warm, funny, and deeply reflective memoir about growing up Chinese American and gay in mid-80s Detroit, during a time of economic hardship, racial tension, and social change. At its heart, the memoir asks a distinctly American question: Who gets to define what it means to be American?
In a conversation hosted by American Community Media on May 22, author and filmmaker Curtis Chin talked about immigration, identity, and the struggle to define what it means to belong in America. Chin grew up in Detroit at a time when its residents were grappling with racial and economic tensions, as well as the first recorded hate crime, the murder of Vincent Chin.
His family restaurant, Chung’s, serves as the backdrop for a young, gay Chinese American observing the interplay of race, discrimination, and stereotyping in a city facing the decline of the auto industry, racial unrest, crack cocaine, and the AIDS crisis. The restaurant stood as a symbol of resilience and belonging in a city facing enormous challenges.
“I grew up in a Chinese restaurant” said Chin, “not just any Chinese restaurant, but the Chinese restaurant in Detroit.” He begins conversations during his book tour across 350 appearances in 10 countries by asking audiences the question, “How many egg rolls do you think we sold in 65 years?” The answer is astonishing: “We sold 10 million egg rolls.” Each roll was handmade by family members — “my grandma, my aunties, my mom.” Despite the hardships surrounding Detroit at the time, Chin remembers his family restaurant as “a delicious place to grow up.”
His gratitude toward his parents shapes the memoir. “Writing the book is a thank you to my parents,” he says, for teaching him and his siblings how to navigate the world. It is also “a hat tip” to Detroit itself, a city he believes is still misunderstood. Rather than portraying Detroit only through violence or decline, Chin presents it as one of the great American cities — complicated, resilient, and full of possibility.
The memoir is carefully structured around the Chinese belief that 888 symbolizes good fortune. Chin divides the book into three sections of eight stories each: elementary school, middle and high school, and college. Through these stories, he traces not only his own coming of age but also the evolution of America’s understanding of identity, race, and belonging.
Unlike many Chinese American stories centered on the West Coast, Chin’s family history begins in the Midwest. His ancestors arrived in the United States in the late 1800s. His great-great-grandfather, Gong Le Chin, first traveled from Canton, China, to Canton, Ohio, before eventually settling in Detroit as the auto industry emerged.
The memoir opens with this family history:
“Welcome to Chung’s. Is this for here or to go?” Armed with a smile and a red waiter’s jacket with a perpetual plum sauce stain, that’s how my dad greeted every new face who entered our restaurant. Generations earlier, my great-great-grandfather Gong Le Chin stood alone on a cold dock in Guangzhou, China, wondering what future awaited his family.“
That journey mirrors the broader immigrant experience in America. Facing discrimination and unable to find factory work, Gong Le Chin opened a hand laundry, one of the few opportunities available to Chinese immigrants at the time. His business ownership became especially important after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which severely restricted Chinese immigration. Because business owners were among the few exceptions allowed to sponsor relatives, Chin’s family was able to remain in America and build a future.
Over generations, the family opened grocery stores, restaurants, and eventually Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine in 1940, the restaurant at the center of Chin’s memoir.
At the same time, the country was grappling with major social upheaval. During the civil rights era, Detroit experienced intense unrest. “Cities were burning down,” Chin recalls, and the National Guard was called in to restore order. Yet even amid violence and uncertainty, his family built a life, raised six children, and created a thriving business.
For Chin, this reflects something essential about America itself: the constant struggle to expand who belongs.
His memoir repeatedly returns to the idea that America succeeds because immigrants contribute to it. Reflecting on his family history during a traditional Ching Ming tomb-sweeping gathering, Chin explains:
“I thought my family succeeded because of America, but America also succeeded because of my family.”
He challenges the common accusation that immigrants “just come and take.” Instead, he argues that immigrants have always strengthened the country economically, culturally, and socially. America, in his view, would not be the same without them.
That belief shapes his understanding of identity. Chin does not see being Asian and being American as opposites. “I fully accept this term Asian-American,” he says. Rather than asking how much of each identity he possesses, he embraces both completely.
At the same time, he acknowledges that prejudice persists. Chin notes that many stereotypes directed at Asian Americans today are strikingly similar to those faced by his ancestors more than a century ago, accusations that they are perpetual foreigners who cannot truly assimilate.
He points to the murder of Vincent Chin during the anti-Japanese backlash of the 1980s. Vincent Chin, a Chinese American celebrating his upcoming wedding, was beaten to death by two white auto workers who blamed Asians for job losses in the auto industry. The attackers were fined $3000 but received no jail time.
For Chin, the stereotypes behind that violence still exist. Yet he also believes the Asian American community has changed significantly. Today, he explains, there are Asian American journalists, politicians, nonprofit leaders, businesspeople, and artists advocating for their communities and challenging discrimination in ways that were not possible decades ago.
That progress gives him hope.
“I know we’re living through some very dark times right now,” Chin says, “but I try to be hopeful.”
What makes him optimistic is the continuing belief in America as a place of opportunity — a country still striving, however imperfectly, toward democracy and inclusion. He argues that democracy and multiculturalism are not achievements that sustain themselves automatically; they require constant effort and participation.
For Chin, that ongoing struggle is part of the American story itself.
“We’re all trying to define what it means to be American together,” he says. “We’re not all going to come up with the same answers.”
In that sense, being American is not about fitting into a single identity. It is about participating in a shared experiment — one shaped by immigrants, different cultures, competing histories, and the belief that people from many backgrounds can still build a common future together.
