Jane Wong’s poetry collections, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything and Overpour, established her as a singular and celebrated voice. In Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, Wong draws on the family stories that have inspired much of her poetry, teasing them out into a delicate and mesmerizing portrait of the forces that shaped her coming of age. From growing up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey Shore to embracing both what you have and what you don’t, Wong’s prismatic memoir is at once tender, thoughtful, and quietly triumphant.
In conversation with Donica Bettanin, PEN America’s Program Director, Literary Awards, Jane Wong discusses the connections between poetry and memoir, the power of teachers and teaching, and community as creative fertilizer.
1. You have previously published two collections of poetry, How did you know it was time to write this memoir? Is it something you always knew you would write?
I always had this inkling that I was going to come back to prose. I began as a fiction writer (shout-out to my mentor Mat Johnson), but I fell in love with poetry and its avenues of bewilderment. I wrote poems the entire time I wrote my memoir; in fact, I finished my second book of poems, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, simultaneously. I started writing nonfiction in 2017, mostly because I felt this pull toward expansion… Oftentimes, when I would perform at poetry readings, I’d tell these little stories about what inspired a poem (such as growing up in a restaurant and being locked in the meat freezer). I started to realize that these little poem “intros” were insights into much larger stories – stories that go beyond my own family, my own relationships. For instance, the title chapter, “Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City,” gave me the opportunity to dig deeper into casinos targeting low-income immigrant families. I kept asking: why do casino buses pick up patrons in Chinatowns across the country? While this was my father’s story of gambling addiction, it was also the story of so many low-income Asian American families who struggled with “making do” when you don’t have much. The essay form gave me that space to do a deeper dive and I’m so grateful for it. Many chapters in the memoir began as singular essays. These chapters ended up being quite linked, like a constellation of migration, resistance, and love. Perhaps this memoir is just one very long poem, who knows!
2. Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City is a memoir of the forces that shaped you. Themes of family, food, identity, and art emerge and intersect. Could you share a little about your process and the non-linear structure of the book?
Yes! The non-linear form of the book mirrors my family’s experience of migration, sociopolitical tumult, and intergenerational trauma. There was no way I could write this book in a linear format. That desired clarity was (and is) impossible. My dissertation focused on the relationship between form and content for Asian American poets, engaging a sense of “haunting” in our work… and how that “haunting” would appear on the page. The books I teach (i.e. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictee and Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do) linger in fragmentation, non-linearity, and multivocality. What I found compelling in my journey of writing were those intersections you noted – what drew each theme together. And oftentimes, it was an image, a phrase, or a character that linked everything together. Funny enough, I didn’t plan those intersections… they kind of showed up on their own. It wasn’t until my editor, Elizabeth DeMeo, would write to me and say “oh, nice echo of the glitter here” that I would finally notice the echoes. I definitely wrote the chapters in this memoir in bits and pieces, out of order. I wrote the braided sections (noted with a thick border) also out of order, even though I wrote them within the same time frame. I hope that the memoir collapses time… and I hope there’s a curious dose of the present and future here too.
“Many chapters in the memoir began as singular essays. These chapters ended up being quite linked, like a constellation of migration, resistance, and love. Perhaps this memoir is just one very long poem, who knows!“
3. Readers have described your relationship with your mom in the book as a kind of love story. (I even went looking for wongmom.com!) What role has she played in your writing life, and in the writing of this book?
Oh, she’s the biggest love story of my life! My truest love. There’s this funny part from the end of “The Object of Love” where she jokes about being my boyfriend! My mom is central in everything that I do. I almost feel like I knew her before I was born. She’s my biggest supporter. And I know so many other people feel astounded by her beauty, humor, and wisdom (once you meet her, it’s instantaneous). My mom often uses aphorisms and metaphors when she gives me life advice – ones that she makes up (like “mangoes forever! You know what I mean?”). She speaks in a way that feels both prophetic and poetic. Maybe this is why I became a poet? She’s pretty much integral to every single book I’ve written. I’m a bit obsessed with her. As I get older, I keep mistaking myself in the mirror for her. The glint of light on a strand of my white hair reminds me of her sleeping in the afternoon, after the night shift at the USPS. Also, wongmom.com will become real! I bought the domain and am working with my friend on it!
4. Continuing to think about ancestry, you write, “I became a poet because of my literary lineage too, which took me too long to discover.” Who do you embrace now as your literary ancestors?
Yes, I think often of my familial ancestors and what trickled into me – were they poets too? And this also leads me to my literary ancestors – poets and writers I feel akin to, in another world. Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Lucille Clifton, Gwendolyn Brooks, Frances Chung…
5. You also teach writing; is there a teacher or a lesson you recall as essential to your own education as a writer?
Teaching is another big love in my life… I’ve been reflecting on teaching a lot since I’m about to go on sabbatical this fall. I have taught every semester/quarter since 2008. My students are absolutely wonderful. I feel honored to be able to share a writing space with them. Just yesterday in class, we engaged sound and musicality in my advanced poetry class and played “pass the sound” – following our ear in a game of slant rhymes, assonance, consonance, cacophony… how dreamy is it to sit in a big circle outside, creating collaborative soundscapes for poems? I have so many teachers to thank in my writing journey. Just to start: Elizabeth Robin, Mrs. L, my high school English teacher. She saw something in me, gurgling language in the corner of a dusty classroom. I remember when she came to see me read for my first book, Overpour, and totally surprised me at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop in NYC. Did I cry? I cried! She’s an amazing poet herself.
“I think often of my familial ancestors and what trickled into me – were they poets too?”
6. What role does community play in your writing process? Do you have a writing group, or trusted readers who you rely on for feedback?
Community is everything! It is, as I write in the book, fertilizer! Shout out to Kundiman, which changed everything in terms of finding a community where I felt empowered and able to be my full self – especially my goofball side. I have so many trusted readers over the years. For this particular memoir, I had four essential early draft readers: Michelle Peñaloza, Quenton Baker, Brenda Miller, and Tessa Hulls. I owe so much to their brilliance and tender feedback. I really have loved being on writing residencies, where I feel vulnerable enough to share the pieces I wrote that very day… in writing this memoir, my communities at Loghaven, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay, and Mineral School were particularly essential. Loghaven is where I finished this book. Shout out especially to Kleaver Cruz, whose forthcoming book The Black Joy Project is phenomenal. We had so many late-night conversations (and nail painting sessions) chatting about writing and life. I could keep going… I’d need a pizza party of gratitude for all the beautiful artists in my life!
7. Have you ever had to navigate censorship—or self-censorship—in your writing?
This is a powerful question. I’m going to answer this in a couple of ways. I certainly know that writing about the Great Leap Forward (in both Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything) was going to be something to navigate, since this is a history that is notably silenced. Ever since I learned about the Great Leap Forward, back in my undergraduate Chinese Politics class, I was haunted by what my family didn’t speak about. It took me about 15 years to finally write about my family’s history, about what caused the death of an estimated 36 million people. Both of these books delve into the layers of gluttony and hunger – and what it means to come from a history of starvation that wasn’t that long ago. I needed to put my ear against this ghostly archive of mine. I had to listen to my ancestors who didn’t survive. Secondly, my memoir also speaks to sexual violence and abusive relationships with men in my life, which I haven’t shared before – for my safety. This is one of the most vulnerable parts of writing this memoir – being able to voice these terrifying traumas. Even though I write about intimate violence in both Overpour and How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, I can slip underneath an image. In writing my memoir, I stepped into some kind of courageous light I didn’t know I could live in.
8. Which writers working today are you most excited by?
Wow, there are so many, especially since I’m always thinking about who I’m going to teach. I’m going to answer this question by linking writing to friendship. I love supporting the work of my friends! Sally Wen Mao has a new book of poems coming out soon (which I was an early reader for, lucky me), The Kingdom of Surfaces. I am also excited about Diana Khoi Nguyen’s second book (I also collaborate a lot with Diana) Root Fractures. Camille Dungy’s nonfiction book Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden! Paul Hlava Ceballos’s book banana [ ] is phenomenal; he recently spoke to my students. I adored teaching Chen Chen’s Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency. Quenton Baker’s ballast. Kaveh Akbar has a novel coming out called Martyr! Anastacia-Reneé’s Notes from the Archivist. We have been family for well over a decade. Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s The Man Who Could Move Clouds (I listened to a new short story of hers via Hugo House that I loved). Tessa Hulls’s graphic memoir that’s coming out next year Feeding Ghosts. I could go on and on and on… I’m too excited. Too excitable. What a nerd.
“It took me about 15 years to finally write about my family’s history, about what caused the death of an estimated 36 million people. Both of these books delve into the layers of gluttony and hunger – and what it means to come from a history of starvation that wasn’t that long ago. I needed to put my ear against this ghostly archive of mine. I had to listen to my ancestors who didn’t survive.”
9. Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City evokes formative locations in your life. What is your favorite bookstore or library these days?
This is a hard question to answer with a singular answer! I grew up in a public library, so libraries are everything to me. I was a library page in the Childrens’ section at the Monmouth County Library in high school (I reshelved dinosaur books over and over and over). Of course, since I live in Seattle, I adore the Seattle Public Library. I have too many bookstores to name that I love, but just locally: Third Place Books, Open Books, Elliott Bay Bookstore Company, and Estelita’s Library!
10. Finally, the title is irresistible. What is your relationship to the song by Bruce Springsteen? And your relationship to the Jersey Shore now?
I grew up on the Jersey shore, in a Chinese American restaurant in a strip mall. I am 100% still very much a Jersey girl. My mom and brother still live in Jersey. Whenever I go home, I can literally feel the ocean salt on my skin. I love how, in Jersey, everyone just kind of talks to you and also not you… it’s hard to explain. But a conversation is random and blunt and hilarious. There’s a warmth and grit that’s hard to explain. I grew up low-income and working class and Springsteen is such a storyteller of what it means to “make do” with what you have. This song, “Atlantic City,” breaks my heart in all its soft spots. “But I got debts that no honest man can pay.” This lyric itself makes me think of my father. Of the restaurant losing business and his gambling circles in the basement. And what drew him to Atlantic City, again and again. The whole acoustic Nebraska album, ah! Of course, the refrain: “Well now everything dies baby that’s a fact / But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.” That’s what I hope for my relationship with my father. That there is some healing there, some love that sprouts through, one lingering seedling at a time.
Jane Wong is the author of the poetry collections How to Not Be Afraid of Everything and Overpour. Her debut memoir is Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City. An associate professor of creative writing at Western Washington University, she grew up in New Jersey and currently lives in Seattle, Washington.