Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong

4.5 (2)
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Product Details

Web ID: 17821907

Wong paints her story with flourish. ' The New York Times'A love letter to Atlantic City and the Asian American working class. ' The Los Angeles Times'Blazing, lyrical. ' The Boston Globe'Joyful.... Wong's memoir invites those who have been overlooked in America to hold up their verses, accolades and solidarity in a collective rejoinder to their detractors. ' The Washington Post An incandescent, exquisitely written memoir about family, food, girlhood, resistance, and growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore. In the late 1980s on the Jersey shore, Jane Wong watches her mother shake ants from an MSG bin behind the family's Chinese restaurant. She is a hungry daughter frying crab rangoon for lunch, a child sneaking naps on bags of rice, a playful sister scheming to trap her brother in the freezer before he traps her first. Jane is part of a family staking their claim to the American dream, even as this dream crumbles. Beneath Atlantic City's promise lies her father's gambling addiction, an addiction that causes him to disappear for days and ultimately leads to the loss of the restaurant.

  • Product Features

    • Suggested age range - Adult
    • Hardcover
    • Dimensions - 5.5" W x 8.6" H x 1.2" D
    • Genre - Biography
    • Publisher: Tin House Books
    • Page count: 288
    • ISBN - 9781953534675
    • Jane Wong (Author)
    • Publication date: 05-16-2023
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Ratings & Reviews

4.5/5

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2 years ago
from Bellingham, WA

Mangoes Forever!

I went to Jane Wong's book reading and it was lively and fun, the parts she read were humorous and heartfelt, and I left with a craving for mangoes! I look forward to reading this book cover to cover, and eating more mangoes.

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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com

2 years ago

Humorous and brutally honest memoir!

MEET ME TONIGHT IN ATLANTIC CITY is a memoir about Jane Wong, growing up as a restaurant baby in New Jersey with an absent father. With a non-linear narrative, Wong shows vulnerability from page 1. As she paddles through love and pushes through fears, the majority is about relationships - dating (problematic) white boyfriends; haunted by the abandonment; dealing with racism and erasure. From visits to illegal dentists to Chinese beauty standards (whiteness) to cultural appropriation, this memoir is both a dense and quirky human adventure. The poetic prose highlights how much Wong thinks about her life through poetry, delivering the most sincere reactions. The author examines Postal service and gambling industry targeting Asian Americans (specifically Chinese Americans), offering so much food for thought. I loved getting a glimpse of the author's creative writing process and dive into poetry. At the beginning of each chapter, there's a short section with black border and a photo, in which Wong has intimate talks with 'wongmom.com' as if chatting with her mother, while 'wongmom.com' offers life advices. My favorite part was Wong's relationship with her mother and brother, and those moments made me yearn for my own. This memoir felt like loose episodes, in essays format and it gave a creative and fast-paced touch to the book. MEET ME TONIGHT IN ATLANTIC CITY is provocative in its own way and provides profound reflections. Humorous, beautiful and brutally honest.

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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com