Ali Wong is a comedian known for the raunchy Netflix specials she performed while pregnant, Baby Cobra and Hard Knock Wife, as well as her latest film release, Always Be My Maybe. Wong’s approach to sex, career advice, relationships, and Asian culture is candid, refreshingly deconstructed, and further explored in her debut book.
Dear Girls is a book of letters written for her daughters, should they ever find themselves in her shoes. Wong’s father passed away abruptly, leaving behind a letter. The final note from Wong’s father left few anecdotes, and she decided she would spare none for her daughters. The girls, Mari and Nikki, play an interesting role in that they’re both a subject of the book as well as the (eventual) intended audience.
The first chapter opens with an abrupt account of Wong’s frustrating dating streak involving five men and their issues with erectile dysfunction. It’s Wong’s unabashed crassness and refusal to avoid any topic that generates an intimate tone throughout the book right from the get-go. For anyone concerned, the front and back of the book directly state that her daughters are prohibited from reading it until they are 21.
Wong’s narrative doesn’t follow a linear structure; instead, it begins with her dating life and jumps around from there. Her experiences as an Asian woman remain peppered throughout, as well as her trials of trying to make it through the comedy circuit. As the mother of two little girls, Wong is blunt about the strife she’s overcome in order to reach her present level of success.
Wong made her debut as a comic performing stand-up and sharing graphic anecdotes about her dating life that she claims are even more vulgar than the jokes she performs now. She pokes fun at the aspiring white, male comics who envied her “allowance” to address topics they could not. As she began to build a name for herself, this envy manifested into resentment, with several comics claiming she was just a token for her gender and race, not a comedian owed respect for her ability to tell jokes and stories. These frustrations weren’t just limited to men; the camaraderie amongst women has its limits in the professional realm too.
As Wong explains in her book, “The absolute worst is when [a female aspiring comic] expects me to help her skip the line. I’m down to help people out if I can, but only after they’ve paid their dues.”
A quick note follows that this isn’t because Wong resents women or sees them as her competition. It’s a note she couldn’t avoid slipping in, lest she risk having an accusation of internalized misogyny hurled her way. Throughout her book, Wong expresses tenderness toward her female relationships, but her feminism isn’t the sweetly-laced, every-woman-is-your-friend narrative that often surfaces in storytelling today.
Part of what makes Dear Girls so charming is that it paints the intricacies of human experiences, and that includes refusing to hold the hands of those wanting a leg-up without exerting the same, tireless routine of visiting dreary bars every night just to cultivate a name. Wong is trying to leave a message to her daughters that, regardless of what they want in life, they must work hard for it. They must exhaust all the possibilities, and they’re allowed to set boundaries and not feel guilty about them.
Ultimately, the theme of the book focuses on motherhood: Wong’s relationship with her mother, her pregnancies, and the hurdles she faced before delivery. Wong discusses how her first pregnancy resulted in miscarriage, and how it changed her interactions with family and friends when she learned she was pregnant with Mari, her eldest.
Miscarriages are terribly common, but Wong recounted that no one in her life had ever shared their experiences or the frequency of these tragedies. Those trying to become pregnant may be familiar with this cautionary reminder: until the end of the first trimester, you shouldn’t announce that you’re expecting. This isn’t intended to scare an expecting parent, but to minimize exposure. It can be traumatizing for someone to repeatedly share their loss with friends, family, and even acquaintances. There are several reasons a miscarriage can occur, but in North America, 15-20 per cent of all pregnancies result in miscarriage. Those who experience one often harbour the shame and blame in silence, as Wong did herself.
She offers advice for those on the outside of the tragedy: don’t ask why. Acknowledge their pain, express your sympathy, let the parents grieve, and move on. Trying to play detective and investigate the why is a passive way of shifting blame onto those who’ve lost.
Wong’s mission is to recount her experiences in the most gut-busting way possible, and it succeeds. She writes exactly as she speaks: graphic, indulgent, and over-the-top. At just over 200 pages, Dear Girls is a quick, distracting read that doesn’t shy away from the gritty tracks of life but tackles it with amusing insight. Wong gives you permission to fail, to learn through her mistakes, and ultimately recover from the blows thrown your way.
