A down-to-earth collection that is raw but not irreverent.
The comedian, actor, and writer distills years of advice into letters to her daughters.
In her first book, Wong—whose Netflix stand-up specials, Hard Knock Wife and Baby Cobra, earned her a massive following—details how she met her husband; pregnancy, childbirth, and the messy chaos of parenting; New York during her early stand-up career, when bombing on stage honed her talents; her Vietnamese/Chinese upbringing; time at UCLA; and study abroad in Hanoi. Throughout these topical letters, her trademark candor is equal parts crass about sex, tender about her family's sacrifices, and sober about miscarriage, among other pains. A few letters are composed as lighthearted lists, including how to host a cheaper wedding: “Buy your dress on eBay,” and “Get your hair done at a blow-out bar.” On spotting authentic Asian restaurants, she writes, “Ninety-nine percent of the clientele should be Asian." The author’s accounts of her initial forays into the comedy business and brushes with famous people add color and demonstrate the necessity of hard work, but it’s behind-the-scenes memories of Wong’s past that stand out for their pointed depiction of a Bay Area immigrant family. Her mother’s unsentimental love, which the author grew to understand after visiting Vietnam herself, is palpable. Wong also lays bare her young adult years, rife with dating disasters, with amusing self-mockery. Digressions on womanhood are refreshing in their nuances, and pride mixes with conviction in the power of expanding comedy beyond an Asian audience. An afterword by Wong’s husband gives insight on what it’s like to fuel someone else’s jokes. Under the raunchy writing—much of which repeats the highlights of Wong’s act—there's familiar, reassuring optimism. About her mother, she writes, "she did her best to make me tough….She will always be there for me.” Wong brings the same dedication here, where mistakes inspire wisecracking wisdom.
A down-to-earth collection that is raw but not irreverent.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-525-50883-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 28, 2019
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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