by Ali Wong
How do you overcome failure?
How do you write a good joke?
How do you learn to live life on the road?
How do you choose who to collaborate with?
How do you stay safe?
The answers to making it, to me, are a lot more universal than anyone’s race or gender, and center on having a tolerance for delayed gratification, a passion for the craft, and a willingness to fail. But it’s the number one question on their minds, because most people, including myself, are conditioned to define other people via race and gender. So much so that, whenever a friend lets me know they’re dating somebody new, my first question is: “What race are they?” The answer is always: “He’s a white man, Ali, okay? Why do you always ask me that?!” And my response is always to raise my eyebrows and stare into my poke bowl.
And yes, there have been and are still many times these days when I have to check people for defining me via my race and gender. For my recent stand-up dates in Las Vegas, the promoters put together clips of my jokes to play on the radio as commercials. I sat in my office listening to their selection for approval. From Hard Knock Wife, they chose an abridged version of the bit where I talk about nannies: “If you are hiring a twenty-five-year-old pretty young thing to be your nanny, you a dumbass. If we had hired a twenty-five-year-old man, you best believe that I would eat the shit out of his butthole.” Now of course, you cannot say “shit” or “butthole” on the radio. So in place of those words, they used what they felt was a very appropriate sound effect: a gong. When I heard that, I put my head into my hands in disappointment. I replied to the promoters: “Please take out that gong. Give me a regular beep like you would give to literally ANY OTHER COMEDIAN.” I mean seriously, would they ever even consider doing that to anyone else? “All right, we got George Lopez coming to town. Cue up ‘La Cucaracha.’ ”
Over the past three years, I have had to do a ton of press. One local reporter was a sixty-year-old white man with an Asian wife who was way too excited to tell me that he had an Asian wife. He spent every third sentence telling me about Anna Maria Luisa. He kept drawing connections between my work and his Filipino wife’s family. Some of them didn’t make sense, and some of them were kind of a stretch. “I noticed that food is a huge theme for you. In my wife’s family, food is so important. Lola [this is a Filipino word for “grandma,” which he made sure to over-pronounce to the point where I thought a grandma from Guadalajara possessed his hairy porcelain body for a second] always insists that we eat before going out for the afternoon.” That’s not necessarily an Asian thing. To me it sounds like Grandma is encouraging people to eat lunch. All sorts of people around the world eat lunch. People in Egypt eat lunch. Black people eat lunch. Termites eat lunch. All of these generalizations he was making about Asian culture, all this authority he was asserting over Asian culture, were really fucking annoying. I was excited to talk about my work process and instead all he wanted to discuss was how his Filipino mother-in-law made delicious shrimp, how he was scared of shrimp before being married to a Filipino, and many other observations about Filipinos and shrimp.
* * *
I was lucky enough to grow up in San Francisco. It’s a beautiful city with a fantastic bridge. It’s also full of Asian people. And I went to UCLA, which is also known as the
University of
Caucasians
Lost
Among Asians.
UCLA was like Asian Wakanda phase two. Yes, there were a lot of Asian American students who were studying to be doctors and lawyers. But I also saw Asian American people undertaking extremely artistic and creative endeavors. I had friends in the design program and others who played jazz. I saw Filipino students performing impressive hip-hop dance routines and traditional stick fighting. I was semi-obsessed with this one Asian American punk girl who had bleached blond hair and piercings all over her face. (Asian punk girl—if you happen to be reading this book, I hope you know I thought you were awesome and always wanted to get to know you! Please DM me. Hopefully, by the time you do, my husband might give me permission to go outside of the marriage, as long as it’s with a woman.) One Japanese American girl in the film program made the most beautiful stop-motion video of these naked, clay human beings making love and melting into each other and then becoming new people afterward. It was disturbing, sexy, beautiful, and scary all at once—like a Jennifer Lopez movie. And it was very important for me to know, early on in my life, that an Asian American woman was capable of making all of those complicated emotions cohabitate in one amazing art piece.
My dad had such overwhelming pride in the accomplishments of other Asian Americans that he always made sure to be aware of what any high-profile Asian Americans were doing. When Margaret Cho’s pilot episode of All-American Girl, the first network TV sitcom featuring an Asian American family, aired, my entire family gathered around the kitchen table in excitement to watch on our small kitchen TV. Our refrigerator door was covered with newspaper clippings about Michael Chang, Kristi Yamaguchi, Lou Diamond Phillips, Dante Basco, B. D. Wong, and Tyson Beckford (he’s half Chinese). Even though William Hung, an American Idol contestant with a thick Chinese accent, and his popularity were a little problematic, my dad still purchased his debut album: Hung Time. Or was it Hung-ry for Love? (I don’t actually remember what it was called, nobody does.) He got famous from doing a cover of “She Bangs” by Ricky Martin, and my dad played it in the living room, while we all seesawed between full grimacing and wild laughing. It was a bewildering time for us all.
Even though my parents were very progressive, and extremely enthusiastic about Asian Americans in the arts, they were not very supportive when I first told them I was moving to NYC to pursue stand-up comedy. When I pointed out that Margaret Cho (who had gone to high school with my oldest sister) was a successful stand-up comedian, and that Maxine Hong Kingston was a very respected writer, my parents said to me, “They are extraordinary exceptions. The chances of all that for you are very slim.” It was hurtful but ultimately, given their backgrounds, I understood why they wanted to be practical.
Asians like predictability. We like safety. We want to know that if we work hard, there will be a payoff. Downward mobility and the shame that comes with it is an Asian immigrant nightmare. And in entertainment, you very well might not make it despite all of those years you invested. There is no linear path to success, and no linear path to maintaining it even if you do achieve it. But it’s important to remember immigrant parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents took the biggest, most unpredictable risk of all: They came to America, when there was no Rosetta Stone, no Google Maps, no blogs, no Airbnb, no cellphones. Some came before there were airplanes or electricity. I could never be that brave and take that kind of risk without all of that. I straight up refuse to go to a restaurant if it’s not well reviewed on Yelp. Then again, if our relatives had been able to Yelp America before coming over, they might have thought twice. Those reviews would have been mixed: “The opportunity is on point, but they kind of overdo it with the institutional racism and the guns. 3 stars.”
My mom came to the United States when she was twenty years old, by herself, not knowing any English, at the beginning of the Vietnam War. People screamed “gook” and all sorts of other hateful names she couldn’t even understand. My dad’s dad came to the United States as an eight-year-old boy on a boat, through Angel Island, all by himself. When he was an adult, he chose his overseas Chinese wife from a picture. She, my grandmother, came to the United States in her late teens, not knowing what her future, or even her husband, would be like. What if my grandfather had severe erectile dysfunction like everybody I dated in my twenties? I guess he didn’t or they worked around it, because he and my grandmother had three kids together. But imagine not even knowing if your husband smells good or appreciates Game of Thrones? You would reference how “Winter is Coming” and he’d give you a blank stare like, What the fuck are
you talking about?
My grandfather passed away when I was eight years old, the exact same age that he was when he came to the United States. His biggest worry when he was eight was how he was going to survive in this strange, new country. My biggest worry when I was eight was if I was going to be Miss Piggy or Paula Abdul for Halloween. I got my first paid job when I was fifteen, at GapKids, folding tiny baby-sized hoodies and taking people’s money and giving them receipts and change. My grandfather’s first job was working as a live-in cook and house cleaner for a family in Monterey, California. He was, again, eight years old. I often think about what it would be like for my grandfather to see me now. What would he think about me saying all of the disgusting things I say onstage? How would he feel about his granddaughter talking about what she lusts after? How I obsess over the most trivial problems. How I make a living by talking about what I want. How people pay to see his granddaughter just talk. He’d probably think I was some sort of magician with ancient powers, derived from behaving very well in a past life. Or a witch, I guess. At the very least, he’d definitely have the opposite opinion of all those jealous-ass white male comedians who say things like “People only like your comedy because you’re female and a minority.” My grandpa would be like, “I can’t believe people like your comedy! You’re a female and a minority!”
And remembering where I came from, and who I came from, has always humbled me and been a constant source of motivation. My father grew up in an apartment with no running water and slept on a twin bed that he shared with his two sisters and mother while his father slept on newspaper on the floor. My dad’s sisters didn’t get to go to college because all the money had to be invested in him—the boy. All of the pressure in the world was on my dad to “make it” for the whole family, and I still can’t believe that he rose to the occasion. He studied like an animal, got into UC Berkeley Medical School, and worked his ass off to become a great anesthesiologist. Thinking about how far my grandfather and father came encouraged me immensely. I strove to travel at least some of the distance they had. Because of this, I was never that upset about my living conditions, even when I was sharing an NYC apartment with six other people. I always remembered my grandfather—an eight-year-old child working as a houseboy for a cruel family, sleeping on newspapers in their basement. Like I said, he continued to sleep on newspaper as an adult when he had three children and a wife crammed into that tiny apartment. Is it possible that he just liked sleeping on newspapers so he could catch up on current events while falling asleep? We’ll never know. Wish he’d written a Dear Grandkids book!
One Asian value that I’m grateful was passed down to me is knowing how to save money. Immigrants are shocked by how expensive everything is when they arrive in this country—Wait, this bowl of pho costs over fifty cents? The price of this bullshit they call brunch is the same as my father’s salary in Vietnam! One meal of eggs and toast…equal a month’s worth of harvesting rice in the sun?? Tickets to see that pregnant comedian live when she’s not even pregnant anymore cost the same as my very dangerous diesel moped! They never get over that habit of trying to stretch a dollar, which, to their credit, is a very useful survival skill. I was taught to never even order a drink with a meal. My mom would sometimes feed us spoiled food even though my dad was a fucking anesthesiologist. If you shook a jug of soy milk that was clearly turning into tofu, she would say it was still good. It all used to embarrass me and made me feel like I was living in a savings prison. My mom yelled at me when I was two minutes into a shower: “You’re taking too long! Get out!” To this day, she only wants me to shower at the gym so I don’t waste her water (I also steal menstrual pads for her from Equinox and she doesn’t even get her period anymore). Whenever we traveled anywhere, my parents would feign interest in a time-share just to get that free breakfast. If there is only one thing I know for absolute certain in this world, it’s this—my parents never had the intention of purchasing a time-share. We grew up in a huge house with no heating. My toes were always blue. I believe in my heart that their frugality caused me my dad’s Raynaud’s. My mom would complain that I needed to just wear more layers. My father and I literally wore bootleg gloves inside the house. Sometimes they were leopard print and said “J.Dew” instead of “J.Crew.”
But it was a blessing. Being cheap came in handy when I moved to NYC, the most expensive city in America. I cooked every single one of my meals and brought a Tupperware container of quinoa, vegetables, and canned sardines with me wherever I went. The only times I really ate out were when some dude was paying. (Which, as I mentioned earlier, rarely happened. They were as stingy with their money as they were with their boners.)
My mom’s complete disregard for beauty allowed me to ignore all of the bullshit in Hollywood. My mom never got facials or pedicures, and she’s still better looking than me. I recently put a Bioré strip on her to rip out her blackheads. The white piece of paper looked like a hairbrush afterward. It was so deeply satisfying. My older sister came into my bathroom five minutes after I peeled it off my mom’s face to ask me a question. I kicked her out and said, “Go back to the living room, I need at least ten more minutes to be alone with the strip.” If you girls ever want to see the strip, just go to the living room and look above the television: I plan on framing it.
Even now, after some success, I’m so terribly cheap, but I think it’s a good thing. I maintain a friendship with a woman that I hate simply because she has a lemon tree. I wear the same $19.99 digital Casio watch that I’ve had forever. I picked up your used infant whale bathtub from somebody’s lawn in the neighborhood (I still don’t know who this person is and if they made meth in that tub or what). I eat eggs that are two weeks past their expiration date. (I don’t really believe that eggs expire. I mean do you know what an expired egg even looks like?) My pajamas are all regular clothes that have gone out of style (if you’re lucky, you might be wearing some of my Ed Hardy jogging pajamas right now!). I keep a bag of hotel slippers and refuse to buy my own. But I paid off the mortgage on our home!
* * *
Another instrumental Asian value is bluntness. My parents always found a way of saying things that you weren’t supposed to. It used to embarrass me, but like the cheapness, now I’m so grateful for it. When my mom and I took a trip to Vietnam together shortly after my father passed, she came to lunch with Hai and about six of our mutual friends. I hadn’t seen a lot of these people in so long and almost cried because I was so happy to be reunited in this beautiful country where we had all first met. When my mom greeted my friend Vinh, after not seeing him for many years, she noticed that he had gained a lot of weight and said to him, “Wow, Vinh, you look so prosperous.” We all knew that she meant, “You got real fat.” But she said it with such a matter-of-fact, unapologetic attitude that it didn’t even offend him. All of our friends heard her and laughed because there was something so familiar and affectionate about her honesty. It just was what it was. Neither she, nor my father, nor me or any of my siblings could ever help but speak to exactly what was on our minds, no matter how inappropriate. Again, this was something that used to really bug the shit out of me. It was really embarrassing when my mom told one of my friends, “I want to see your nose job” after she got a nose job. When I was in Vietnam, I traveled to Phú Quốc, an island known for making fish sauce. I returned to Saigon with a bottle for my aunt Nga hoping that she would be excited. When she tasted it, she looked up at me and said: “What can I say? It’s just not good.”
But now, I love that my family taught me how to be refreshingly rude and honest. It also toughened me up and prepared me for bombing and criticism, because I had been humorlessly roasted by my family my whole life. People always tell me that they think stand-up comedy is so hard. But it’s nothing compared to being hoorided constantly by the people who love you most and know you best. My mom used to say, “The tangerine skin is thick so you must have sharp nails.” People like to praise Asian America
ns as the model minority for their strong work ethic and good behavior. My Vietnamese mother did not give me either. But she made me cheap, tough, and salty, like a steak from Sizzler.
When the movie Crazy Rich Asians first premiered, a very talented Asian American actress in her late forties, who I’ll call Rebecca, admitted to me that she refused to watch the film, and would probably never see it, simply because she was jealous that she wasn’t in it. As she looked down at her shoes, she confessed, “I just feel so left out.”
I told her, “It’s not your fault. You were made to feel that way. The lack of opportunities for Asian Americans in Hollywood conditioned you to be insecure and envious.”
“You don’t feel that way?” she asked me.
“Well, you’re from a different generation, where the success of another Asian person drives you crazy because you were made to believe that there was only one spot available.”