Dear Girls: Intimate Tales, Untold Secrets & Advice for Living Your Best Life is an inspiring, crass, and hilarious memoir by Ali Wong, the stand-up comedian who performed both of her mega-successful Netflix specials, Baby Cobra and Hard-Knock Wife, while 7-months pregnant. Baby Cobra was filmed in 2015 while she was pregnant with her daughter, Mari, and Hard-Knock Wife was filmed in 2017 when she was pregnant with her daughter Nikki. In Dear Girls, Ali Wong unpacks her life, her rise to fame, and she offers wisdom on broader questions about working motherhood.
Each of the chapters in Dear Girls, is addressed to her daughters (as adults) as she tries to pass on the wisdom she has learned about work, family, studying abroad, love, motherhood, and all the work she has done to increase the representation of the Asian-American community within the American mainstream. Ali Wong’s greatest weapon against intolerance, misogyny, and racism is to make people laugh.
Large portions of Dear Girls is specific advice for female and Asian-American stand-up comedians (in case her daughters decide to become comedians). The parts of her book I enjoyed and related to the most were when she talks about connecting with her roots through studying abroad and how she met and “trapped” her husband, Justin Hakuta, into marrying her.
The courtship between Ali Wong and Justin Hakuta is especially is delightful to read about because the final chapter of the memoir is written by Justin Hakuta himself. In it, he discusses his decision to set his work aside to be the primary caregiver for their daughters, so that the children could have a stable home life while their mother continues to kick down doors, take names, and lift their entire community. Justin Hakuta’s motivation is informed by his experience of having a nurturing, stay-at-home mother who grounded the family while his famous father—Ken Hakuta, also known as “Dr. Fad,” who is an inventor and famous TV personality—was out in the world increasing Asian-American representation.
Justin writes this to his daughters:
“Famous parents are part of the family, but they are also part of a much wider tapestry of relationships made of the people they impact. We have to share them. Your mother, like your grandfather and all other pop culture celebrities, often struggles with balancing the pursuit of her career and craft and spending time with us, and she’s right—it’s tough. I know how to be your mother’s balancing half, and how to be your father, because of how I was raised.”
Justin Hakuta, Dear Girls
He goes on to discuss how his mother, Mari and Nikki’s “lola,” is the inspiration for the father he wants to be, and how he views his marriage with the famous Ali Wong.
“It was crucial for your uncles and me that your lola was a consistent parental presence who helped ground the family. […] Because someone needs to ground a family when fame is so intoxicating. I learned how to navigate the limelight of your mother’s fame from growing up in my house where your lola was the grounding force.”
Justin Hakuta, Dear Girls
This is wise and straightforward advice, especially for men who are married to notable, successful women. Justin Hakuta does not seethe with jealousy, compete with, try to undermine, or try to cannibalize his wife’s success—as, say, Richard Burton did with Elizabeth Taylor; or Paul Newman with Joanne Woodward; or Dezi Arnaz and Lucille Ball. Instead, Justin Hakuta mans-up by being the partner she needs to help her reach international success, lift their community, and provide a stable household for their children. Justin understands that the more women and people of color are given space to shine, the brighter the world is for all of us.
Here is what Ali Wong writes about how important it was for her to return to work. Partly it was out of financial necessity (more than once in her stand-up and in her memoir she refers to the prenup Justin’s family made her sign as the best thing that ever happened to her because it forced her to keep working or risk financial destitution if they ever got divorced), and partly out of a sense of injustice for how invisible women still are in the world.
“I really began to rethink my plans of being a stay-at-home mom after I saw that movie Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It’s an acclaimed documentary about the Steve Jobs of sushi in Japan. He is extremely anal about the temperature of rice and the texture of the fish. He has two sons that are his proteges, but it’s very hard for them to live up to their father’s legacy. Because Jiro is so dedicated to the craft of sushi, at night he dreams of sushi. Everybody watched that documentary in awe of Jiro and his singular commitment to the art of fish. I watched that film and thought, Where the fuck is Mrs. Jiro? She isn’t even mentioned in the goddamn documentary. Somebody had to raise those two sons while Father Jiro was busy being a sushi hero. […] What does Mrs. Jiro dream of? Freedom. Recognition. Divorce. I saw that movie and decided that I wasn’t gonna go out like that.”
Ali Wong, Dear Girls
Women are still under-represented in positions of power and influence. Men are under-represented in the domestic sphere. I loved reading Dear Girls because both partners are leaders in their community and role models for all of us. Ali Wong is a leader by shattering stereotypes. Justin Hakuta is also a leader by showing how to be a good father and a supportive spouse to a famous woman. Ali Wong is a role model for purpose-driven women and girls, and Justin Hakuta is a role model for men and boys who want a holistic life that isn’t just a treadmill of work. Sharing their marriage-story in Dear Girls is an incredible act of generosity.
We all know what traditional-marriages look like, but seeing the reverse-traditional marriage celebrated in popular culture is a wonderful, brave new frontier.
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