Meet me Tonight in Atlantic City : : a Memoir

Locations
Call Number: 921 Wong, Jane, Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Literary / Wong, Jane
On Shelf At: Downtown Library, Malletts Creek Branch, Traverwood Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	921 Wong, Jane	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Literary / Wong, Jane	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Traverwood Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Literary / Wong, Jane	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Nonfiction / Biography / Literary / Wong, Jane	4-week checkout	Due 05-12-2024

Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City -- Root Canal Street -- A Cheat Sheet for Restaurant Babies -- Give Us Our Crowns -- A Jane by Any Other Name -- Bad Bildungsroman with Table Tennis -- The Object of Love -- To Love a Mosquito -- The Thief -- Snow, Rain, Heat, Pandemic, Gloom of Night -- Finding the Bloodline -- Astonished Enough?
"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. In her debut memoir, Jane Wong tells a new story about Atlantic City, one that resists a single identity, a single story as she writes about making do with what you have--and what you don't. What does it mean, she asks, to be both tender and angry? What is strength without vulnerability--and humor? Filled with beauty found in unexpected places, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a resounding love song of the Asian American working class, a portrait of how we become who we are, and a story of lyric wisdom to hold and to share"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Booklist Review
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Summary / Annotation
Table of Contents
Excerpt
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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Outstanding memoir submitted by redwood on June 29, 2023, 12:41pm n a series of short and long personal essays, structurally inventive but sticking to a strong and forthright sense of personal voice, Wong traverses many different facets of her life, from her childhood as a “restaurant baby” and onetime pageant competitor in New Jersey, to past abusive relationships—with partners, or with the father who abandoned her family, to her becoming a poet.

Wong treads a lot of familiar tropes, from comments about a smelly lunch to parents and elders cutting fruit as a form of love, but her sparkling prose renders them all fresh. Food isn’t just a metaphor to her—it is worthwhile in itself, spectacular substance that makes her: once her family’s livelihood, always their lifeblood. And it’s also worth noting that these tropes are often employed by professional-class Asian Americans to stand in for any and all trauma, while Wong reframes them through a working-class lens.

Most of all, this book is a love letter to Jane’s mother, also known as “Wongmom.com” for her excellent advice. She’s strong, wise, funny, compassionate, a postal worker, vocally proud of her daughter, one of a kind. Almost all of the short pieces focus on her explicitly, and she is a main character in most of the long ones as well. This memoir is full of heart, and equally full of exquisitely wrought sentences and phrases that made me gasp and take notes. Reading prose by beloved poets is one of my favorite things, and this continues that trend for me.