Wong pokes fun at her lingering “daddy issues,” but her relationships with men tend to echo her dysfunctional relationship with her father. After a yearlong romance, one boyfriend leaves for work, and, days later, breaks up with Wong, telling her “he never loved me … none of it was real.” In one particularly disturbing interaction, Wong is propositioned in a used bookstore by a middle-aged white man, who offers her $1,000 cash for a night together. In these painful episodes, the reader can’t help but see shadows of the “nonchalant disregard” Wong’s father had for her when she was a child.
Wong offers no theories as to what drove her father to behave in such pathological ways. But the reader learns that her parents’ marriage was an arranged one, and it’s unclear whether the two were ever in love. Perhaps marital strife, combined with economic pressures, contributed to Wong’s father’s uncontrollable desire to gamble. Wong cites a 2016 article by Michael Liao entitled “Asian Americans and Problem Gambling,” which theorizes that “the impulse to gamble” is “tied to matters of control.” Wong adds, “Among vulnerable communities who may feel powerless in their everyday lives, this is one way to take action.”
Do a quick Google search on “Asian marketing jobs,” and you’ll find Las Vegas-based postings from companies like The Venetian and Caesars Entertainment at the top of the list. But while big casino marketers might target Asian Americans, they don’t always succeed. Lucky Dragon, for example, was deliberately designed to capture Asian high-rollers, employing feng shui and Asian street food and marketing itself as Las Vegas’ first Asian-themed resort experience. It opened in 2016 only to close in January 2018, becoming one of the “shortest-lived casino ventures in the history” of the city, according to Casino.org. Lucky Dragon would reopen in 2020 under new ownership but then fold again in late 2022.
Though the roots of Wong’s father’s addiction remain mysterious, the family’s response to losing their patriarch to gambling is admirable. Today, Wong teaches creative writing at Western Washington University and is an acclaimed poet. Her mother stuffs Wong’s second book, How to Not Be Afraid of Everything, into her work bag and shows her co-workers on the night shift at the post office. “My daughter was in the New York Times,” her mom says. “Can you believe it?” In a video in which he reads a scene from one of Wong’s published essays, her brother “talks about how he wants to be a great dad, to loosen the weight of his own relationship to his father.” “The video was too tender, too generous,” Wong writes. “I couldn’t share it.”
Wong’s loving portrayal of her mother and brother and her bracingly honest account of her own struggles in the aftermath of her father’s poor choices illuminate the lasting damage gambling can do to families. The memoir also shines as an ode to working-class Asian immigrants and the pressures and dangers they face without complaint, pressures that, to their American-born children, seem unendurable.