This month we’re chatting with New York Times bestselling author and illustrator and Newbery and Caldecott Honor winner Grace Lin. Grace shares how her new book, Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods, came to be, from the concept to the illustrations to the food selection.

Why did you want to write a book about Chinese American food?

Back in 2004, I wrote and illustrated a picture book called Fortune Cookie Fortunes (which was a follow-up to my picture book Dim Sum for Everyone!). For the backmatter of that book, I researched the origin of the fortune cookie and learned that even though it was always associated with Chinese food, it was a completely American invention.

And when I told this to people, many of them exclaimed, “Oh, so, fortune cookies aren’t even really Chinese?”

This was always said in a tone of disdain, sometimes disgust. And this bothered me. For, as an American-born Asian person who struggled to find connection with her heritage, I could easily see the same words said about me. That made me think that maybe I should do a whole book on American Chinese restaurant food—a book that would give American Chinese food more respect.

Because just like being an Asian American, Asian American food is not something to be ashamed of or to scorn. Yes, every Chinese dish served in an American restaurant has been adapted and changed. Yes, most do not have the flavors of traditional Chinese cuisine and are unlike what you would find in China. But American Chinese cuisine is the flavor of resilience, the flavor of adaptability, the flavor of persistence and triumph. Above anything, this food is the flavor of America.

How do you approach writing nonfiction versus fiction? Or do you use similar processes? 

The process is similar since I use a lot of Chinese myths and folktales in my novels as well. I collect stories and wait, sometimes for years, until the story fits the larger narrative I want to tell. However, some of those stories were tales my father told around the dinner table or a couple of lines in a questionably translated book. Since this book was non-fiction, I knew such sources might be suspect, so I hired a research assistant, Izabelle Brande, to help me find secondary sources of these stories. I wanted to make sure they had true roots in Chinese culture and not just something my Dad made up! Izabelle often found many different versions of these stories. I tried my best to integrate the different versions together, keeping the common threads so that the spirit of the stories were as authentic as I could make them.

Tell us about this book’s journey in getting published. Did you sell it on proposal? What was the editing process like? 

Well, I’ve been sitting on this idea for quite a long time—years and years. It was really my agent, Rebecca Sherman, who told me she thought the time was right and I should go for it. So, I wrote a detailed proposal with the table of contents (which did change), a sample story (Dragon Well Tea) and two sample illustrations. Even with this material, I’m not sure if everyone quite saw the vision I had for it. I kept saying, “I want it to be like D’Aulaires’ Greek Myths, but for Chinese food!” and receiving puzzled looks in response.  Still, I feel very lucky that I have worked with my editor Alvina Ling and everyone at Little, Brown for so long that they were willing to go along and take it on faith that I could do what I was saying—because, in the end, I think they would all agree we made a beautiful book that we can be proud of.

The editing process was hard because we were under a very tight deadline; because of the way the schedule worked out, by the time the manuscript was in, we had passed the point where the book could be pushed to another season.  But both Alvina and I have high standards! I remember her pushing me to put in more personal memories and thoughts which, at first, I was reluctant to—I thought adding my personal voice might make it feel less “classic” but, in the end, I realized that by adding my little remembrances made the book more accessible to a contemporary reader. And, since I don’t speak or write Chinese with any kind of fluency, we had, not one, but two Mandarin fluent fact checker/copy editors making sure everything I had written was correct. So, it was a lot of attention to detail in a short amount of time—very, very intense! In some ways it was good, because it was so extreme, I don’t remember spending a lot of time torturing myself with self-doubt and loathing, which usually happens when I write.

The illustrations are beautiful. Can you tell us about the process of including those in the book?

Thank you! The section dividers: Appetizers, Chef’s Specials, etc. are painted traditionally. I used my daughter and her friend as models and used old Chinese advertising posters/calendars as inspiration for the design. You may have seen them—they usually feature a beautiful Chinese woman holding a flower or a fan with an elaborate border.

The illustrations for the actual stories were inspired by old Chinese labels from around the same period of the posters, labels that were printed in 2 or 3 colors. Creating them was a bit of an experiment for me—my first foray into digital!  I drew the images with pencil on tracing paper, scanned the drawing in and “cleaned” them up and colored them up in Photoshop. It took me a number of time until I got the swing of it, but I’m quite pleased by how they turned out.

Did you get to try all of the foods described in the book? If so, do you have a favorite? 

In the book, I confess to never having Beggar’s Chicken—and I still have not! The places that serve it ask for at least a 24-hour request ahead of time and I have not had the opportunity (or the money!) to try it. But I am told it is sublime. I hope someday to get the opportunity!

I’m not sure which dish is my favorite—but I did enjoy going out for Peking Duck numerous times…

How did you go about selecting the dishes to be included?

It was balance—I wanted to choose the dishes that kids of all races would be most familiar with—Chow Mein, General Tso’s, fortune cookies, etc. But I also wanted to make sure they were stories that kids would love. That is why there is a tea section: kids might not be as interested in the different kinds of tea but, as well as being an important part of Chinese cuisine, the stories about tea are fascinating. The story about Silver Needle Tea is my daughter’s favorite.

There were some dishes that I didn’t use or only mentioned in the intros because I didn’t think the stories would be particularly interesting to kids—like fried rice was invented to reuse leftovers and soy sauce was invented to extend salt—especially when there were so many other exciting stories to choose from!

What other children’s books about cuisine would you recommend? 

Oh my gosh, there are so many now! When I first published Dim Sum for Everyone in 2001, there weren’t that many children’s books about cuisine, much less Asian cuisine. Now there is an abundance of riches! Here are just a few of my favorites off the top of my head, I want people to know that there are so many more, just look for them!

Everybody Cooks Rice by Nora Dooley

Dumplings for Lili by Melissa Iwai

Fry Bread by Kevin Noble Maillard, illustrated by Juana Martinez-Neal

Soul Food Sunday by Winsome Bingham

Hot Pot Night by Vincent Chin

Eat Your Words by Charlotte Jones, illustrated by John Obrien

Yummy: A History of Desserts by Victoria Grace Elliott, Noodles Please by Cheryl Yau Chepusova, illustrated by Rebecca Hollingsworth

The “Very Asian Guide” series:

•       A Very Asian Guide to Korean Food written by Michelle Li and illustrated by Sunnu Rebecca Choi
•       A Very Asian Guide to Indian Food written by Julie Ajinkya and illustrated by Aditi Kakade Beaufrand
•       A Very Asian Guide to Vietnamese Food written by Cat Nguyen and illustrated by Kim Thai Nguyen
•       A Very Asian Guide to Filipino Food written and illustrated by Amira Humes

Anything you’d like to add?

The food I write about in Chinese Menu is American Chinese food, which means it has its roots in that rich, vivid history but is now forever intertwined with American taste and culture.  Which means all Americans can all claim it. Just as we claim the hot dog (from Germany) and the apple pie (Dutch), we can claim egg rolls and fortune cookies as American, too. But to do so, we should acknowledge where these foods came from and respect it. Which is what I hope Chinese Menu helps to do.

I also hope that by knowing these stories, it makes readers’ Chinese food taste better, too!

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Check out Grace’s Chinese Menu: The History, Myths, and Legends Behind Your Favorite Foods, out Tuesday, September 12.

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Before Grace Lin was an award-winning and NY Times bestselling author/illustrator of picture books, early readers and middle grade novels, she was the only Asian girl (except for her sisters) going to her elementary school in Upstate NY. That experience, good and bad, has influenced her books—including her Newbery Honor WHERE THE MOUNTAIN MEETS THE MOON, her Geisel Honor LING & TING, her National Book Finalist WHEN THE SEA TURNED TO SILVER and her Caldecott Honor A BIG MOONCAKE FOR LITTLE STAR. But, it also causes Grace to persevere for diversity as an occasional New England Public Radio commentator and when she gave her TEDx talk “The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf,” as well as her PBSNewHour video essay “What to do when you realize classic books from your childhood are racist?.” She continued this mission with a hundred episodes of the podcast kidlitwomen* and now currently hosts two other podcasts: Book Friends Forever and Kids Ask Authors. In 2016, Grace’s art was displayed at the White House and Grace, herself, was recognized by President Obama’s office as a Champion of Change for Asian American and Pacific Islander Art and Storytelling. In 2022, Grace was awarded the Children’s Literature Legacy Award from the American Library Association. Grace is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts with her husband, daughter and five chickens.