NOBODY WANTS THEIR IDENTITY REDUCED TO RACE OR GENDER
ALI WONG IS ONE OF AMERICA’S MOST SUCCESSFUL COMEDIANS. SO WHY IS HER ETHNICITY THE ONLY THING PEOPLE WANT TO TALK ABOUT?
Comedian and actor Ali Wong has experienced major success in Hollywood – so why, she wonders, are people only interested in talking about her ethnicity?
most people ”UNFORTUNATELY, HAVE BEEN CONDITIONED to define other people VIA RACE AND GENDER. EVEN ME”
Something I always get asked is: ‘What is it like being an Asian-American woman in Hollywood?’ I hate this question almost as much as I hate, ‘What is it like being a female in comedy?’ Nobody wants their identity and defining characteristics reduced to just race and gender, and I resent that white men never get asked, ‘What is it like being a white man in movies?’ What disappoints me even more is that the people asking are always Asian-American. It’s like they want to hear a titillating story about how a high-powered Hollywood executive sat me down in his office and said, ‘Look, we love you, Ali. In fact... we love you long time!’ before throwing rice on my face and kicking me out of his office, screaming, ‘You’ll never make it in the white man’s world, you chinky ho!’ (That, unfortunately, has never happened to me.) I rarely get asked what I think is a more interesting question: How do you overcome failure? (My answer, if you’re curious, centres on having a tolerance for delayed gratification, a passion for the craft and a willingness to fail.) Unfortunately, most people have been conditioned to define other people via race and gender. Even me. When friends tell me they’re dating somebody new, I always ask, ‘What race is he?’ Their answer: ‘He’s a white man, Ali, OK?’ And my response is always to raise my eyebrows and stare into my poke bowl. Over the past three years, I’ve had to do a ton of press. One reporter was a 6O-yearold white man who was way too excited to tell me that he had an Asian wife. He kept drawing connections between my work and his Filipino wife’s family: ‘I noticed that food is a huge theme for you. In my wife’s family, food is so important. She always insists we eat before going out for the afternoon.’ But that’s not necessarily an Asian thing. It sounded like his wife was encouraging people to eat lunch. All sorts of people around the world eat lunch. Termites eat lunch. I was excited to talk about my process and all he wanted to discuss was how his mother-in-law made delicious shrimp. I was lucky enough to grow up in San Francisco, a beautiful city with a fantastic bridge that’s also full of Asian people. And I went to UCLA, otherwise known as the University of Caucasians Lost among Asians. UCLA was like Asian Wakanda. Yes, there were a lot studying to be doctors and lawyers. But I also saw them in design and jazz programmes. One Japanese-American girl in the film programme made the most beautiful stop-motion video of naked clay humans making love and melting into each other and then becoming new people afterwards. It was disturbing, sexy, beautiful and scary all at once. And it was important for me to know that an Asian-American woman was capable of making these complicated emotions cohabitate in one amazing art piece. My dad had overwhelming pride in the accomplishments of other Asian-Americans. 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 to watch it on our small TV. And our fridge was covered with clippings of Michael Chang, Kristi Yamaguchi and Tyson Beckford (he’s part Chinese). My parents were very progressive and extremely enthusiastic about AsianAmericans in the arts, but they were not very supportive when I told them I was moving to New York to pursue standup comedy. When I pointed out that Margaret Cho is a successful stand-up comedian and Maxine Hong Kingston a very respected writer, my parents said, ‘They are extraordinary exceptions. The chances of all that for you are very slim.’ Asians like predictability. We want to know that if we work hard, there will be a pay-off. Downward mobility and the shame that comes with it is an Asian immigrant nightmare. And in entertainment, you might very well not make it, despite all those years you invested. There is no linear path to success. But immigrant parents, grandparents and great-grandparents took the most unpredictable risk of all: they came to the US when there was no Rosetta Stone, no Google Maps, no mobile phones. I could never be so brave. I 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: ‘The opportunity is on point, but they kind of overdo it with the institutional racism and the guns. Three stars.’) My mum came to the US when she was 2O, by herself, not knowing any English, at the beginning of the Vietnam War. People screamed ‘gook’ and all
sorts of other hateful names at her. My dad’s dad came to the US as an eight-year-old boy on a boat, all by himself. When he was an adult, he chose his overseas Chinese wife from a picture. My grandmother came to the US in her late teens, not knowing what her life would be like. Imagine not even knowing if your future husband smelled good or appreciated Game of Thrones. My grandfather passed away when I was eight, the same age as he was when he arrived. His biggest worry when he was eight was how he was going to survive in this strange new country. My biggest worry was if I was going to be Miss Piggy or Paula Abdul for Halloween. I often think about what it would be like for him to find out that people pay to see his granddaughter just talk. He’d probably think I was a magician with ancient powers, derived from behaving well in a past life. 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!’
One Asian value I’m grateful was passed down to me is knowing how to save money. Immigrants are shocked by how expensive everything is here. They never get over the habit of trying to stretch a dollar, which, to their credit, is a very useful survival skill. If you shook a jug of soy milk that was clearly turning into tofu, my mum would say it was still good. To this day, she asks me to shower at the gym so I don’t waste her water. But being cheap came in handy when I moved to NYC, the most expensive city in the US. Even now, after some success, I’m still so terribly cheap. I maintain a friendship with a woman I hate simply because she has a lemon tree. I picked up a used infant bathtub from somebody’s lawn (I still don’t know who this person is and if they made meth in that tub or what). But I paid off my mortgage! Another instrumental Asian value is bluntness. It used to embarrass me when my parents voiced things that most people kept to themselves but now I’m so grateful for it. When my mum and I took a trip to Vietnam shortly after my father passed away, we met some friends for lunch. When my mum greeted my friend Vinh, she said, ‘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 attitude that it didn’t even offend him. People always tell me that they think standup comedy – and dealing with criticism – must be hard. Well, it’s nothing compared to being roasted by those who love you most. When the movie Crazy Rich Asians premiered, a very talented Asian-American actress in her forties 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.’ The lack of opportunities for Asian-Americans in Hollywood had conditioned her to feel insecure and envious. For her, and many Asian-American actresses of her generation, the ugly but truthful answer to my least favourite question was: Don’t miss the one spot every 1O years. I’ll never forget that conversation because it made me realise how timing and my upbringing shaped how I see myself and the world around me. My house growing up was filled with Chinese stone carvings, screens and rugs. Every year, my family attended the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival. I developed my first crushes on Asian-American boys in the same Chinatown alleyway youth centre where my dad hung out as a kid. My actress friend who didn’t get cast in Crazy Rich Asians grew up on the East Coast, isolated from people who looked like her, which made her instinctively competitive when, all of a sudden, she was surrounded by Asian-American women because they were also auditioning for the role of the wet-haired ghost from The Ring or Angry Waitress With Fake-Ass Accent No. 2.
Here’s my advice to young AsianAmerican women who want to make it in Hollywood (or anywhere, really): let go of seeing yourself as nothing more than an Asian-American woman. Expose yourself to how other people in the US live and you’ll discover the universal struggles that connect us (like how we all sleep in hotel rooms and pretend they’re not covered in the cum of a thousand lonely men). If you hang out with the same people, you will only be able to make those people laugh. Don’t get me wrong – it’s also important to make friends with other Asian-Americans in entertainment. When I moved to Los Angeles, the comedian Bobby Lee drove me to a Korean restaurant that smelled like charcoal and beef. When we sat down, he told me, ‘I’m older than you, so of course I’m going to pay for everything. Get whatever you want.’ This familial connection with other Asian-Americans in entertainment – how they take care of me and demand other people respect me – has given me my community. What I’m saying is you need both – your community and what lies outside it. My last piece of advice would be to focus not on the result but on the process and the journey. Again, Asian people often seek out predictable outcomes. But to succeed in a creative profession, you really need to love it. And when I say that, I mean really love it. In fact, you’ve gotta love it long time.
Adapted from the book Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life by Ali Wong (Canongate), out now