Review of Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City by Jane Wong

*Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City* by Jane Wong (2023). Published by Tin House Books.

There are some books that I know about as soon as the author announces they got the deal, and when I saw poet Jane Wong was having a memoir published, I knew I was going to be reading it.

As the date got closer, I requested my local library branch purchase a copy of the memoir, then I put in a hold immediately so I could be one of the first people to read it when the book copies came in. And that happened.

But in the mean time, I was going to the writers’ conference in Seattle, AWP, and picked up a copy of her poetry book How to Not Be Afraid of Everything.

I would highly recommend reading both books together, now that I can say this in hindsight. It felt like an interconnected experience by reading them together, and Wong references the making of that collection a couple of times in Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City.

I understand the conventions of genre as its needed, but in the long run I hold a view that genre is only a medium. The interconnection between poetry and nonfiction here is a solid thread.

Anyways, I’m rambling. Let’s get into the review!

A story of girlhood, diaspora, and coming of age as not only a person, but a poet.

This is a memoir that begins in Wong’s childhood, but goes all the way towards the present day, when Wong is struggling with relationships and writing a collection (such as How to Not Be Afraid of Everything). We begin in Atlantic City, where her immigrant parents settled and opened a Chinese restaurant. Wong grows up frying crab rangoons, but beneath the surface of her parent’s marriage, her father has a gambling addiction.

There are many thoughts and sentences dedicated to how he was addicted to gambling, but the most devastating impact behind his addiction was the fact it caused the family to lose their restaurant.

All of this is juxtaposed with Wong’s flowery language, as this memoir reads a lot like a lyric essay at times. The nonlinear structure of the memoir lends itself to that, too, as this takes an unconventional approach for the genre at times.

Beyond that, one of Wong’s childhood memories if being Chinese American in the United States, and the daughter of restaurant owners (until they lost it). This is a theme that continues all the way through the end of the memoir, as Wong gets an education, and ultimately gets into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop to study poetry.

There’s that pressure of not feeling good enough threaded into her experiences even in the workshop, and how Wong continuously felt alienated.

Other sections of the memoir go into her relationships, but I truly think that there’s a lot more to discuss that should have you reading the memoir if you haven’t already. I’ve given enough of a summary altogether, but each of these elements comes together to create something in which identity is in flux.

It’s hard to neatly label anything under a label without spurring some kind of debate, and we have a tendency to try and force people into labels, too.

But through this memoir, we begin to see how people are complicated. I think Wong does an excellent job of taking us and showing the ripple effect of events throughout our lives, but also how where we were born and raised sets us up for the rest of our lives. We cycle through a lot of emotions through this memoir, and I say that in the best way possible.

Overall Thoughts

Go read the memoir if you haven’t already.

I really liked Wong’s poetry before going into this, so I kind of had high expectations when it came to this memoir, but then I ended up thinking that my expectations were met. I genuinely enjoyed this memoir and devoured it in one sitting.

If I’m not feeling a book, I stop reading it and try to return eventually before giving up. Not this one!

Anyways, I’d summarize my feelings about this book as that it feels true, almost alive. I could imagine the anger and hurt at times, which is an indicator of really good writing.

Follow me below on Instagram and Goodreads for more.