Curtis Chin to address the crowd at annual Night for Notables

This weekend is the Library of Michigan’s annual Night for Notables celebration, honoring the 20 Michigan Notable Books on this year’s list and the authors behind them.

However, there’s a dark cloud hanging over Saturday’s (April 26) celebration due to recent federal cutbacks for library services and the arts and humanities, along with continued book banning. Despite that, the show will go on. The keynote speaker will be Curtis Chin, whose memoir, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant,” was a Michigan Notable Book in 2024. (Full disclosure: I will be interviewing Chin at the event and have served on the Michigan Notable Books selection committee for years.)

Chin will talk about his family’s restaurant, Chung’s, which was not only a popular Chinese eatery but also a refuge during the tumultuous 1980s in Detroit, when crack cocaine, the AIDS crisis and the disassembling of the auto industry plagued the city. The restaurant was founded by Chin’s great-grandfather in 1939 and moved from its original home in Detroit’s Chinatown to the Cass Corridor in 1960 when the Chinatown area was paved over for an expressway.

Chin will take attendees inside the multigenerational family restaurant, which thrived for more than six decades, selling over 10,000 eggrolls before it closed in 2000. Chin’s restaurant days have inspired him to begin working on a docuseries about iconic Chinese restaurants across the United States. He’s also working on a screenplay adaptation of his memoir, which will follow Chinese Americans living through the chaotic 1980s in Detroit.

Since winning a Michigan Notable Book award, Chin has been visiting schools and libraries across the country and will soon leave for a European tour. Ironically, his suburban Detroit high school wouldn’t let him speak, an experience he’ll discuss in detail at the Night for Notables.

He’ll also talk about the murder of a family friend, Vincent Chin, who was killed by two Detroit auto workers who mistakenly thought he was Japanese at a time of high anti-Japanese sentiment. The death had a lasting impact on Curtis Chin, inspiring him to become a writer for the documentary “Vincent Who?” in 2009.

Since then, Chin has written and directed documentaries on the late Los Angeles-based photographer and activist Corky Lee and standardized testing at a New York City middle school. A graduate of the University of Michigan, he’s written for a variety of news outlets, including CNN, the Detroit Free Press, Bon Appétit and the Boston Globe. He’s also a co-founder of New York City’s nonprofit Asian American Writers’ Workshop, which has launched numerous best-selling authors.

In addition to being about working and growing up in a Chinese restaurant, Chin’s memoir is a complex coming-of-age and coming-out story. He calls himself a gay “ABC” (American-born Chinese).

Growing up, Chin would spend his after-school hours studying while working at the restaurant. At a recent event in East Lansing, he told of his experience with former Detroit Mayor Coleman Young, who frequented Chung’s and imparted an inspirational message about dealing with anger.

Chin also believes that his father’s wisdom regarding customers has spilled over into his worldview.

“Most parents were telling their kids, ‘Don’t talk to strangers,’” Chin said. “My brothers and I were thrown into the restaurant environment, where talking to strangers was encouraged.”

A limited number of Night for Notables tickets are still available on the Library of Michigan Foundation’s website. Authors who will be in attendance to sign books include Erin Bartels, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Donald Lystra, Amos Paul Kennedy Jr. and Melba Joyce Boyd, among others. Boyd, who is Michigan’s poet laureate, will read one of her poems.

Attendees will also have an opportunity to view 20 stunning and disturbing photographs of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning photographer Taro Yamasaki, which will be accompanied by stunning poetic descriptions written by Anne-Marie Oomen, who has won several Michigan Notable Book awards and was the recipient of the Library of Michigan’s 2023-‘24 Michigan Author Award.

Yamasaki and Oomen, who met at a patio party during the pandemic, are working on a manuscript showcasing Yamasaki’s photographs of children who have faced trauma in war-torn countries, coupled with Oomen’ lyric-driven poetry.