Grace Young (author) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Grace Young
Grace Young at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in 2022
Awards	Julia Child Award, James Beard Foundation Award

Grace Young is an American cookbook author, activist, and food historian. She is famous for her knowledge of Chinese cuisine and cooking with a wok. In 2022, she received two major honors: the Julia Child Award and the James Beard Humanitarian of the Year award. These awards recognized her amazing work in the world of food.

Grace Young has written several cookbooks about American Chinese cuisine. Her books, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen and The Breath of a Wok, have been very important. They helped a new generation of cooks learn how to use the Chinese wok. Both of these books won the Best International Cookbook Award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

As an activist, Grace Young started helping New York City's Chinatown during the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, she made a video series called Coronavirus: Chinatown Stories. In these videos, she talked to many business and restaurant owners in Chinatown. Later, in 2021, she created the Grace Young Support Chinatown Fund. This fund raised $40,000 to help four businesses in Chinatown.

Grace Young's Early Life and Career

Grace Young grew up in San Francisco, California. She describes her family as a "traditional Cantonese family," meaning they mostly ate Cantonese food. When she was a young girl, Grace loved watching Julia Child's cooking show, The French Chef. She would even try to make the recipes from the show herself.

Grace says Julia Child was a big inspiration for her. She wanted to do for Chinese cooking what Julia Child had done for French cooking. In high school, Grace worked in a cooking school kitchen. She also interned at a Dole Pineapple test kitchen in San Francisco. During college, she spent three years working at the General Foods test kitchen.

Working on Cookbooks and Videos

After college, Grace Young worked for about 15 to 20 years at Time Life Books. She was the director of their test kitchen and also managed food photography for over 40 cookbooks. In her 30s, she learned many traditional Cantonese recipes from her parents. She put these recipes into her first cookbook, The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, which came out in 1999. This book won an award and was a finalist for another.

In 2004, Grace published her second cookbook, The Breath of a Wok. This book had 125 recipes for cooking with a wok. It also won several awards. Later, in 2006, she started working on her next cookbook, Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge. This book talked about the benefits and history of stir-frying. It was published four years later and won a James Beard Foundation Award in 2011.

Grace Young is also known for her cooking videos. In 2016, she released "Chinese Trinidadian Chicken with Mango Chutney." This video showed her cooking the dish and won an award in 2017. In 2017, she also released "The Breath of Wok Video," which explained how woks are built and used. This video was a finalist for an award in 2019. In 2019, she posted "Wok Therapist," a funny video about the wok cooking advice she gives people. This video won a James Beard Digital Award in 2020.

Besides her cookbooks and videos, Grace Young has done many other things. She served on the James Beard Foundation's Book Awards Committee for six years. She was also an editor for Saveur magazine for nine years. She worked as the Test Kitchen Director for the U.C. Berkeley Wellness Cooking School. Grace also has an online cooking course, and over 12,000 students have taken it.

Grace Young's Activism and Community Work

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Grace Young became a strong voice for historic Chinatowns across the United States. She also helped raise awareness about violence against Asian Americans. In 2020, when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was thinking about a city-wide lockdown, Grace worked with filmmaker Dan Ahn. They documented how the pandemic was affecting Chinatown in New York City. This project was called "Coronavirus: Chinatown Stories." The video series was nominated for an award and was even shown at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

Grace Young also worked closely with the James Beard Foundation. In 2020, she joined their #savechineserestaurants Instagram campaign. Later, she partnered with the Poster House museum to fight against anti-Asian feelings through the #LoveAAPI campaign.

In 2021, she started the Grace Young Support Chinatown Fund with a New York non-profit called Welcome to Chinatown. This fund raised $40,000. The money went to well-known Chinatown restaurants like Hop Lee, Hop Kee, Wo Hop Upstairs, and Wo Hop Downstairs. These restaurants used the funds to provide meals for people who didn't have enough food. Grace also announced that she is donating the $50,000 prize from her Julia Child Award to non-profit groups that help Chinatowns across the United States.

In April 2021, she worked with Asian Americans For Equality (AAFE). Together, they raised $25,000. This money was used to buy 7,000 personal security alarms for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Museum Contributions and Recognition

Grace Young has helped preserve Chinese-American food history by donating items to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She gave her family's Canton Rose porcelain dinnerware, which was from around 1939, and their wok, from around 1949. She also donated a copy of The French Chef Cookbook signed by Julia Child, a copy of her own book The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen, and some items related to Julia Child.

Grace Young has also given talks and programs at many museums. These include the Smithsonian Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Poster House museum. In 2004, she was a curator for "The Breath of a Wok" exhibition at New York University’s Asian Pacific American Gallery. Currently, she is part of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History's Kitchen Cabinet, which is the museum's food advisory board.

Awards and Honors

Here are some other awards Grace Young has received:

• Forbes 50 Over 50 (2023)
• USA Today Women of the Year (2023)
• James Beard Foundation's Humanitarian of the Year (2022)
• Eating Well's American Food Hero (2022)