realistic & Contemporary

Grades 10 +

Chop Suey nation

By Ann Hui

2019 - Douglas & McIntyre

In 2016, Globe and Mail reporter Ann Hui drove across Canada, from Victoria to Fogo Island, to write about small-town Chinese restaurants and the families who run them. It was only after the story was published that she discovered her own family could have been included—her parents had run their own Chinese restaurant, The Legion Cafe, before she was born. This discovery, and the realization that there was so much of her own history she didn’t yet know, set her on a time-sensitive mission: to understand how, after generations living in a poverty-stricken area of Guangdong, China, her family had somehow wound up in Canada.

Keywords: Asian-Canadians, Canada, Cuisine, Family History, Food, Memoir, Nonfiction, Travel