Comedian Ali Wong entered my life this summer when I desperately needed her.
I had returned to work three months after the birth of my fourth child. In a routine familiar to many working moms, every few hours, I excused myself to go to the nursing room to pump.
Somehow, I got the idea to watch something funny as I pumped to boost my supply. It worked! For many weeks, I watched Wong's two stand-up Netflix specials Baby Cobra and Hard Knock Wife on a loop.
Last week, the talented Chinese-Vietnamese-American performer released her first book Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life.
The book is framed as a series of essays to her two daughters. Wong isn't just funny, she's pretty wise. Below are five pieces of advice to Mari and Nikki that can be useful for anyone.
1. Why it's important to bomb
Wong may seem like an overnight sensation, but she's not. She's 37 and has been hustling since her early 20s. When she was just starting out, she writes that she'd do up to nine comedy sets a night. Unpaid.
She writes: "I think all you need to be a good stand-up is to have a unique point of view, be funny, and enjoy bombing in front of strangers. You really do have to learn to like bombing a lot. Even now, when the audience is too good, sometimes I think,I didn't deserve that.
You'll know you're a stand-up when, after a spectacular bomb, you don't feel like you want to quit, but instead the opposite: You want to go up again. If you don't bomb, you'll think you're good and there's no work to do. But there's always work to do."
2. There's no point in memorizing anything
Wong is fiercely proud of her Asian roots, nurtured by a Chinese-American father and Vietnamese mother. What she isn't a fan of? Asian-style rote memorization.
"Especially now, with the Internet and Wikipedia, it's a totally useless skill. It's not an advantage at all, to have all of that information memorized. I was raised to ask why, to learn how to process information and think for myself. Knowing the capital of Mozambique and being able to fill in the entire periodic table of the elements does not give you an advantage these days when there's Google," she writes.
3. Marry someone who's similar enough to you
Who's Wong's muse? Fans of her raunchy specials know it's her husband Justin Hakuta, a frequent target of her jokes. Wong says they're both "half fancy Asian and half jungle Asian."
"Besides having a very fundamental emotional connection and physical attraction, your father and I are both the exact same amount of Asian. And I don't mean that it was challenging to find another full-blooded Asian person (there are over a billion in China alone)," she writes.
"Culturally, I was yearning for someone who matched both my love for authentic Asian cuisine and also grew up going to bar mitzvahs and Passover dinners. It was always a struggle to find a partner who matched my passion for saving money, taking risks, and being engaged in anything that was challenging but ultimately worthwhile. Someone who had a high threshold for failure and a zero-tolerance policy for shoes in a house."
4. Why you shouldn't wear heels
In her Netflix specials, Wong wears stretchy sheath dresses with ballet flats, instead of heels.
She explains why: "If either of you ever decide to do stand-up (for the last time, please don't) and do a special or any sort of taping, always perform in flats. There's an old Chinese proverb that goes, "You die from the feet up."
Our feet are crucial toward our movement and health, and inform your every step onstage. You girls will inevitably go through a phase where you want to wear heels. My old pal Beyonce does it magically. But please remember that your performance should never be limited by your shoes. It's not worth your calves looking 20 percent better."
5. Life's too short to eat bad Asian food
Wong writes: "I would feel deep shame if I ever caught one of you eating at a gross Asian restaurant. I'd rather catch you trafficking cocaine into Thailand in any number of orifices than see you eating at a P. F. Chang's. General rule of thumb: 99 percent of the clientele should be Asian. If you see groups of old Asian women there, that's a very, very good sign."
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