Rachel Phan

Rachel Phan is a Chinese Canadian author born and raised in a small town in Southern Ontario, where she was one of only two racialized people in her class.  Growing up, Rachel always felt a little lost and a lot lonely. She sought escapism from her life by writing the stories she desperately wanted to see, ones where a Chinese-Vietnamese girl like her was the main character. It was no surprise when she got two journalism degrees and became a professional writer.  A graduate of Toronto Metropolitan University’s Master of Journalism program, she has shared her stories on CBC, HuffPost, the National Post, and Maclean’s. Rachel’s work often explores the impacts of racism, assimilation, fetishization, and forced displacement on one’s feelings of identity, belonging, and self-worth. Her debut book, Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging, publishes in Spring 2025.  Rachel now lives in Toronto, ON. For more information, www.rachelphan.com and follow @rachelmphan.

Restaurant Kid: A Memoir of Family and Belonging explores the intricacies of identity and belonging as a Chinese-Canadian girl in small-town Ontario. How did it feel to open up about your lived experience?

It was terrifying, freeing, messy, healing, deeply fulfilling—all the emotions! Writing a memoir means constantly interrogating yourself: What’s the truth? What am I afraid to say? Why am I afraid to say it?

Writing about my lived experiences meant confronting memories I’d spent years trying to minimize or explain away. It gave me language for things I didn’t know how to articulate growing up: the quiet grief of assimilation, the complicated love between immigrant parents and their children, and the pressure of straddling two cultures.

Mining through a lifetime of trauma meant reliving painful events and bringing things I’d repressed to the light. But I also had to be really intentional about how I told the story—what to include, what to leave out, and how to be fair and compassionate to everyone in it because this is my family’s story as much as it’s mine.

I felt a deep responsibility to honour my family and to write with care, even when the truth was uncomfortable. In the end, the process helped me reclaim parts of myself and my life. It reminded me that sharing our stories, especially as racialized people, is an act of joy, resistance, and connection.

Restaurant Kid began as a short piece for CBC’s First Person stories. It received overwhelming response from readers – what was the process of developing a short personal essay into a full-length memoir like?

That CBC essay changed my life—and not just because it helped me land an agent and a book deal! After it was published, I was flooded with messages from people who had grown up in small family businesses, were the children of immigrants, or had wrestled with the same questions around identity, duty, and belonging. That response showed me just how hungry people are for stories like ours. It showed me I’m not alone in having these experiences.

Expanding the piece into a memoir meant going deeper—not just into my own memories, but into the systems and histories that shaped me and my family. I had to slow down, revisit moments I thought I’d already processed, and ask new questions. It meant sitting down with each member of my family and having the conversations I’d been putting off my whole life. It required a lot of emotional excavation.

But it also allowed me to create space for joy, humour, and love—not just suffering and intergenerational trauma. The entire process was the most poignant and meaningful experience of my life. It facilitated healing within my family and brought us closer together. What a gift!

Who is a writer that inspires you and why?

So many writers inspire me! I owe so much to memoirists like Nicole Chung, Elizabeth Miki Brina, T Kira Madden, Qian Julie Wang, Michelle Zauner, Ly Tran, and Kat Chow for paving the way for me. Reading memoirs by fellow East Asian women gave me the courage to share my own story—and showed me that there is space for me and my voice in publishing and on bookshelves.

I’m also endlessly inspired by authors like Carmen Maria Machado and Sabaa Tahir who play with genre and refuse to be boxed in by arbitrary categories. I hope I can do the same as my career progresses.