Curtis Chin grew up inside Chung’s Cantonese Cuisine. His great-grandfather first opened the Detroit restaurant in 1940, and in the 1970s and ‘80s Chung’s was the backdrop for many of Curtis’s formative lessons about race, identity and belonging.
He talks to host Anita Rao about his experience learning how to code-switch as an Asian American and gay kid in a Black and white city — and how serving and observing customers in the restaurant helped him find his own way as a writer, filmmaker and activist.
Curtis Chin is the author of “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant.”
