Parchment Book Group: Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin

Name: Parchment Book Group: Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin
Start: 2026-02-09T18:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-02-09T19:00:00-05:00
Location: Parchment Community Library

Schedule

Mon Feb 09 2026 at 06:00 pm to 07:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Parchment Community Library | Kalamazoo, MI

The Parchment Book Group meets Monday, February 9 at 6:00 pm.
Our featured book for February: Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant by Curtis Chin ~ The Great Michigan Read Selection for 2025-26
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Join us for an hour of discussion of the featured book. Share your thoughts, share a quote or two from the book, and rate the book from 1-10.
New guests are always warmly welcomed! 🙂
Let us know if you need to borrow a copy of the book!
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About the Book:
This memoir -- this year's Great Michigan Read selection -- tells the story of Curtis Chin’s time growing up as a gay Chinese American kid in 1980’s Detroit.
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.
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Be sure to pick up a bookmark featuring all of our upcoming monthly Book Group selections -- find them in our lobby!
#BookGroup #libraryevents #librarybookgroup #bookclub #librarybookclub #bookgroups #bookdiscussion
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Looking Ahead:
March 9: Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez - the Kalamazoo Reading Together Selection
April 13: Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (true crime)
May 11: The Briar Club by Kate Quinn (historical fiction)
June 8: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (fiction)
July 13: Dear Abigail: The Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and her Two Remarkable Sisters by Diane Jacobs (biography) For America 250