Near the end of her debut memoir, Rachel Phan wonders: "What do we owe our parents? It's the question I, and so many other children of immigrants, have to wrestle with constantly." The product of her wrestling is Restaurant Kid, which goes beyond the comforting familiarity of a local Chinese restaurant's menu and behind the swinging kitchen door. Phan brings readers into this emotionally honest account of how her parents spent long days running their family business in a small Canadian town after fleeing China, then Vietnam. The restaurant isn't separate from family life but rather is Phan's family life in innumerable ways as she spends hours in their apartment above it longing for the parental attention being diverted there.
Phan recounts growing up as a third-culture kid struggling to connect with her parents, and the racism she faced as a member of one of the only Asian families in their small town. It impacted her sense of self-worth and was the impetus behind some detrimental choices that harmed both herself and her parents.
The memoir culminates in a family trip to Vietnam where Phan and her siblings are able, as adults, to see their parents in a more complete light. They begin to understand how difficult it is to bear the weight of an inherited cultural history of trauma and displacement as they learn what their parents endured before emigrating and also witness the happiness they are capable of. With regret for what was lost and appreciation for what she's finding now, Restaurant Kid is a heartfelt and complex love letter to family and to an immigrant experience. --Kristen Coates, editor and freelance reviewer