Ali Wong

The New York Times bestseller Ali Wong's heartfelt and hilarious letters to her daughters cover everything they need to know in life, like the unpleasant details of dating, how to be a working mum in a male-dominated profession and how she trapped their dad. In her hit Netflix comedy special Baby Cobra, Wong told the world her remarkably unfiltered thoughts on marriage, sex, Asian culture, working women and why you never see new mum comics on stage but you sure see plenty of new dads. The sharp insights and humour are even more personal in this completely original collection. She shares the wisdom she’s learned from a life in comedy and reveals stories from her life off stage, including the brutal single life in New York (i.e. the inevitable confrontation with erectile dysfunction), reconnecting with her roots (and drinking snake blood) in Vietnam, tales of being a wild child growing up in San Francisco and parenting war stories. Ali Wong's letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving and enlightening (and gross) for all.

Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets and Advice for Living Your Best Life

Dear Girls

Wong's heartfelt and hilarious letters to her daughters cover everything they need to know in life, like the unpleasant details of dating, how to be a working mom in a male-dominated profession, and how she trapped their dad. Though addressed to her daughters, the letters are absurdly funny, surprisingly moving, and enlightening (and gross) for all.

Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets, and Advice for Living Your Best Life

Funny unsurprisingly since its Ali Wong. I’d love the concept of it being a letter to her daughters. She has lived a really interesting life and unlike most celebrities really has enough interesting touching stories to actually fill a memoir. Listened in one sitting while I was at work.

Liyah 🤎

Bria

I love her energy. She’s so unapologetically herself, and I love it.

Ditipriya Acharya

This was not the best memoir I’ve ever read, but Ali Wong’s filthy humour made it a fun read. Dear Girls is a series of letters Ali has written to her daughters, the ones she was famously pregnant with while shooting her two Netflix specials. She talks about everything from her relationships, marriage, pregnancy, miscarriage, motherhood, stand-up comedy and makes some pretty interesting points about her identity often being narrowed down to only her gender the fact that she is Asian American. 

However, there were parts where I felt her humour was forced, like she was trying to make a point just for the punch line. The first few times the instances didn’t stand out much, but then as I progressed through the book it started happening more often. I ended up enjoying the more serious chapters more. I thought chapters where she talks about her first pregnancy and the consequent miscarriage, her relationship with her parents and siblings, and the work that goes into her marriage were very well-written and the humour there, though not as frequent, really shone. 

I strangely ended up really liking the chapter written by her husband at the end of the book. Overall, I think that Ali Wong wrote Dear Girls for her daughters and as a reader, who is definitely not her daughter, this didn’t mean as much to me and I particularly couldn’t relate to a things that are very specific to an Asian American growing up in America.

Elisavet Rozaki 

Teresa Bonifácio

3.5

I loved Ali’s Baby Cobra standup. 
A liked that this book is just her talking to her daughters and explaining them everything. About her, their dad, their families, their culture and how hard the world is for those who don’t are born as a white male. 
I just think that she could have explored some chapters a little more.

Marcy Pursell 

If you're a fan of Ali Wong's "Baby Cobra" standup special, then you'll probably like this book. It includes some raunchy jokes and stories, as you might expect, in addition to regular stories from her life. A story written for her two daughters once they're of age, and includes an afterward by her husband Justin.

ali rly had me laughing so much! and the ending chapter is so heartfelt, i rly enjoyed listening to the audio book and find myself going back to certain chapters <3

maya s

read this before Beef blew up and feel like Ali Wong is the perfect cast for the Beef role.

Xin Ma

Ali Angco

Ali Wong's comedy is raunchy - and that is an understatement. She somehow managed to take her vulgarly hilarious comedy and turn it into a heartfelt series of letters to her daughters. 

If you enjoy her comedy, you'd like this too (especially as an audiobook.)

Izza

3.5 stars | Now I must finally watch her Netflix special.

Sara

(2.75) Some moments of this really touched me and some were just ok. Love Ali Wong!!!

Sophia Rabon

a little dirtier than i like, but nonetheless hilarious and odd and sweet

Mariane Ferrantino 

Laugh out loud funny with some good advice to boot. Ali Wong is awesome.

Emma Friedheim

I actually really loved this! I didn’t know much about Ali Wong honestly, but loved the easy tone and crude humor that I guess is her trademark. Fun distraction :)

alicia

Select chapters have refreshing and riveting takes from Ali Wong on some of her Asian American experiences - food being one of them. Most other chapters are overtly crude and repetitive from her standup. 

Kristen Jones

A super funny & interesting read! Enjoyed hearing about Ali’s experiences and triumphs and hope her daughters enjoy this when they’re older!

Vivian

While reading this hilarious book I also watched Ali’s two stand up comedy shows on Netflix. She’s going to overthrow all the stereotypes you’ve ever had about Asian females, and that’s an understatement. 

I love how she jokes about her race/culture/gender identities to the point that you just can’t tell whether she’s being sarcastic or dead serious. And some of them got me thinking and even helped to shape my thoughts on these issues.

Also a lot of her jokes are gross, maybe even too gross. But the fact that she’s being totally cool and unapologetic about it, just makes you respect this woman even more.

Go Ali. 
(Go Justin too, it must be difficult as hell being married to a comedian who jokes about her married life on stage.)

Charlotte Jones

I was excited to dive into this book, as I don't often read celebrity memoirs, but appreciate Ali Wong's outlook in her standups. As I finished though, it felt like it was missing something...or maybe it felt like there was too much? To be completely honest, I'm not sure. Maybe it was because I listened to the audiobook, but her stories didn't stick with me and I found myself not fully listening.

Nicki

This was every bit what you should expect from an Ali Wong book. I listened to the audiobook and so it was nice hearing her talk about her experiences and stories. There wasn't really much that stood out in the end but it was still enjoyable nontheless.

Brittany Harper

3.75 stars.  Listened to this one.  This was good!  Definitely 21+, with very explicit language.  I've seen some of Ali's work, and was intrigued by her book to learn more about her story.  Enjoyed getting her perspective on the entertainment industry, comedians, love, race, family history, etc.

Liz Carpenter

2.5 ⭐️ (Just really not my style of humor, but still found a few of her insights to be really interesting.)

Michelle Xu

Super funny 4 star read! (Or listen, I actually listened to the audiobook, which I highly recommend).

I definitely recommend the audiobook because it's narrated by Ali Wong herself and the afterword is narrated by her husband, Justin Hakuta. It was a raunchy autobiographical book that was part advice, part memoir, and part comedy show. I like that it was fairly unique compared to other comedian memoir's I've read in that the premise is based on a series of letters to her children. Most memoirs that I read are chronological and start like "childhood, teenage years, experiences in school, young adulthood, finding comedy, failures in comedy, experience during their big break in comedy, and now: present day!" This is to say that it was a bit more unique and interesting laid out in this manner. However, I'm trying to imagine her daughters actually reading this book in the future and can only imagine the amount of cringe they will have. I already get uncomfortable when my mom mentions anything about sex. But I suppose, they will have grown up in a household that's much more open about sex and bodily fluids than mine. 

I listened to this audiobook with my sister and occasionally my super Asian mom would listen to parts of it as well when I had it playing aloud while doing chores. I felt like, despite its raunchiness, we all took something away from the book. As an Asian American family, we could relate to so much of it, from Ali's family dynamics, the importance of food to our culture, the west coast vs east coast Asians, growing up feeling out of place, etc. Each chapter was both funny yet insightful. Ali talking about her pregnancies also hit home for me, knowing what my mom also went through to have my sister and I. I was also listening to her birthing chapter when I was going through my OB/GYN virtual clerkship for med school so her discussing her induction and need for a cervical balloon was also way too real since I had literally just learned about intrapartum care.

I also enjoyed getting to know more about her husband, and I especially really appreciated his afterword. It was such an interesting contrast listening to her first then him. He seems so calm, like the yin to her yang, and yet so perfectly matched in their outlooks on life.

I only ended up docking this one star because, despite its uniqueness in chapter organization, I still found the pacing to be a little confusing. Even though I liked the letter format of "Dear girls" at the beginning of each chapter, it jumped around so much that I sometimes had a difficult time keeping track of what point in time of Ali's life we were currently learning about. For example, it goes from meeting her husband to pregnancy, then from being a working mom to food and dating. We then round back to learn more about her husband before jumping into food once again. I would have liked a more cohesive organization of the chapters and maybe more guides on what year or location Ali was in since the chapters jumped backward and forward in time randomly. 

Overall, I still incredibly enjoyed this audiobook! Listening to comedians talk about their own lives never get old :)

Rachel Briggs

To be honest, I am a huge fan of Ali Wong. Her raunchy standup, hilarious writing style and down-to-earth acting always puts a smile on my face. This book... well... I was disappointed to say the least.

Анастасия Розова

I've watched Ali's to stand-up specials before listening to this audiobook, so some of the things from the book I've already heard. But I still enjoyed it enough to finish and be glad I've decided to pick it up. 
I also prefer this sort of humorous memoirs to be read by the author, so this was perfect in that department. Ali is funny and open, for some people maybe a bit too much open about her life, but I was okay with all the sex-poo-period-childbirth talk, so it didn't bother me at all. Still, beware if something like that bothers you.
Anyway, I don't feel like it was VERY funny, but I giggled a couple of times and generally enjoyed the book.
Also it was moving to hear her husband do the last chapter from his own perspective. Sweet.

Dear Girls Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets and Advice for Living Your Best Life

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