Curtis Chin
Writer & Director
Curtis Chin is an author, TV writer, filmmaker, and Chinese restaurant kid originally from Detroit. In 2023, he published his award-winning memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant about growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in Detroit in the 1980s while working at his family’s restaurant: Chung’s, a flagship restaurant in Detroit.
In college, he studied creative writing at the University of Michigan. Post-grad, he co-founded Asian American Writers Workshop in New York City, the premier nonprofit for promoting Asian American writers. He wrote comedy for network and cable television before transitioning to social justice documentaries, including an award-winning short on Corky Lee. He has screened his films at over 600 venues in 20 countries, including The White House.
Currently, he’s based in Los Angeles and is working on a PBS docuseries on Chinese restaurants in America.
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This interview has been edited for length & clarity. It took place on February 17, 2025.
Q: What was your childhood like?
CC: I grew up in the 1980s in Detroit, it was a terrible time for the city. I knew 5 people murdered by the time I was 18 years old. But despite that, my family owned a fabulous Chinese restaurant called Chung’s in Cass Corridor (what’s now known as Midtown). Chung’s was like an oasis amidst all the craziness going on.
Q: What was the biggest lesson you learned growing up in a Chinese restaurant?
CC: When you’re a little kid, people say don’t talk to strangers. My parents gave me the exact opposite advice: talk to strangers — who they were talking about were the people sitting in our dining room. My mom didn't get a chance to graduate high school and my dad went to community college for 2 semesters before dropping out. They didn't necessarily know all the economic opportunities that existed, but they knew a whole room full of people who did.
Anytime my dad met somebody who he thought had a cool job he’d call us kids (6 in total) to run over and ask them questions like: "How did you get your job? What do you do for a living? How much money do you make?"
That really taught me to not be afraid to ask questions in life. To not be afraid to ask for help if you need it and engage with the world. Especially nowadays, when America feels very divided, that instinct to go up to people who are different has really helped me in life.
Q: Tell me about your journey to becoming a writer.
CC: I didn’t read much as a kid. I’m not your stereotypical person who has that background. Instead, what I did was I talked to the customers in our restaurant. I sat in that dining room and listened to their stories. Writers need to be able to listen and observe the world. Because I met so many diverse people in the restaurant, I got a good perspective on the world and what I thought it should be. On paper, it might seem like I’m not qualified to pursue writing. But I was really developing all these ways of engaging with the world that were equally, if not more essential, than reading.
The first time I thought of writing as something important was when I was 14. There was a famous hate crime murder in Detroit about Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American. This was in the 1980s, during the height of the anti-Japanese sentiment, when auto workers were being laid off in droves and Japanese car companies were being blamed. Vincent was out celebrating his wedding when two laid off autoworkers bashed his head in.
We were family friends with Vincent. When you're a 14-year-old kid and you know somebody that's been beaten like that, you're going to check the news, right? So I did. Nothing. I checked the next day. Nothing — nothing for 12 straight days. But in the interim, everyone in the community was coming to our restaurant trying to find out details of the story.
That contrast between what our community cared about and what the mainstream media was willing to cover really stuck out to me. That’s when I realized: if people won’t tell our stories, then we have to tell them.
"The first time I thought of writing as something important was when I was 14. There was a famous hate crime murder in Detroit about Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American. The news didn't report on it for 12 days. That's when I realized: if people won't tell our stories, then we have to tell them."
An old photo of Chung's, Curtis Chin's family restaurant in a journal
Q: What led you to start Asian American Writers' Workshop?
CC: I founded AAWW partly because of an experience I had at the University of Michigan. I love U-M, but I did have a particularly negative experience in the creative writing undergraduate program. At the time, the program was just starting out, and I was the only person of color. I had an instructor accuse me of plagiarism because she thought a story I wrote was too good to come from an undergrad. It was shocking to me — that this is the way you treat the one person of color. Afterward, I decided I wanted to move to a place with more Asian-American writers.
Post-grad, I moved to New York. I met other Asian American writers during readings. We pooled together our resources and founded the nonprofit Asian American Writers Workshop. We started out just doing creative writing workshops, but now we've gone on to do readings, publish a book, go on tour, and open a bookstore. Within 5 years, we grew the budget from 0 to $750,000. It was crazy how fast it grew. But I just think that shows there was this pent-up energy and demand for Asian American literature. We just tapped into that.
Q: How did you get into filmmaking
CC: After graduating from U-M with a creative writing degree, I did the struggling writer thing in New York and did pretty well. By 25, I won the state’s largest poetry prize. Then I moved to California to be with my partner (now husband) in L.A. In L.A., I switched from poetry to screenwriting and worked as a Hollywood assistant. Then I got a fellowship from ABC/The Disney Company and worked for them for a few years.
In 2005, I was writing for The Disney Channel when my parents got in a car accident in Detroit. My Dad passed away, and my mom was severely injured. My older brother, Chris, immediately moved her to the Bay Area to help her recuperate. I went back to Detroit to help with some of the loose ends: selling the family restaurant and family home. It took forever. There wasn’t much I could do so I tried to think of a project.
That’s when I thought of the Vincent Chin case, which was important to my Dad, who was friends with him. I thought: “Maybe I could do this story.” I didn’t have any experience, but I just started asking around. That’s how I made the “Vincent Who” documentary.
Eventually, I returned to L.A., but I told myself: I won’t do the big Hollywood stuff anymore. I want to do more independent pieces where I’ll have more control over the stories I tell. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing for the last 15-20 years as an independent writer and filmmaker.
Q: What does success mean to you?
CC: I think the most rewarding thing about my life has been meeting interesting people. Hopefully, I’ve helped them in some small way. I try to give back as much as I can.
Growing up at the restaurant, I met everyone from Detroit mayor Coleman Young to pimps to prostitutes to drag queens. Sometimes, the people that have the biggest impact on your life aren’t the people you spend the most time with. They could be people you meet for the briefest moments, but there’s something about them that opens a door for you and gives you permission to see yourself differently. As a closeted gay kid, whenever I met openly gay customers, I felt seen.
Curtis Chin on a book tour for Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant
Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant book cover
Q: What does being an Asian American artist mean to you?
CC: When I was working in film studios, it was never my story. It was always someone else’s. Back then (about 20 years ago), there were very few opportunities for Asian Americans in mainstream Hollywood. You might’ve had a random kung fu series — not the type of stuff I like to write. So in my work, I try to center our stories.
The landscape has changed so much. On one hand, it's great, because there are more opportunities to get Asian American stories out there. But on the other hand, because of Silicon Valley's invasion of Hollywood, the financial structure has changed where it's actually made it in some ways more difficult to make a living as an Asian American writer. In the past, at least once you broke in, you could make a living. Now, even if you have a show on air you could still find yourself on the unemployment line or living on food stamps. It’s really tough.
Q: What's your creative process like?
CC: I think process really boils down to your childhood and how you were raised. For me, growing up in a Chinese restaurant, vacations, weekends, and holidays meant nothing to me. I didn’t grow up with them so I work a lot of hours. Fortunately, I love what I do.
The idea of being able to pick up and do things at a moment's notice is a skill set that I developed as a kid. I had to do my homework while being able to stop at a moment’s notice if a customer came in, then go back to my homework. Whether I'm sitting on an airplane or train or wherever, I can turn on my writing hat right away.
Q: What's your advice for aspiring creatives?
CC: In these fields, you’re going to hear the word no a lot. Don’t let that voice be your own. When you do hear a no, you have to be smart enough to understand if it’s a permanent no or a “maybe not right now.” There are so many times I’ll apply for things and people will tell me: "You’re not qualified. Why are you applying?" And I say: "Why not?"
People of color and women do this a lot more than straight white guys: If we see a job that we want, we ask: "Are we qualified for it?" We have to learn to give ourselves permission to say, "I might not be qualified on paper, but I’ll at least put myself up for it."
Don't be afraid of rejection. In creative jobs, you’re going to get rejected — a hell of a lot. For my memoir, I had to reach out to 90 different agents before I found the agent who signed me. But I didn't give up. Now, the book’s been out for 1.5 years, it’s in its 3rd printing and I’m touring around the world for it, including Oxford University. But what if I had stopped at the 89th rejection? None of this would have happened.