Written for The Argo by Diamond Rogers

On Wednesday, September 27, 2023, author Jane Wong visited Stockton University to read her newly published book “Meet Me in Atlantic City” with a Q&A and book signing. Through the Stephen Dunn Reading Series, sponsored by William T. Daly School of General Studies & Graduate Education and Madeleine J. Deininger, the LITT Program and Murphy Writing Center got Jane to talk about not just her book but her experience as a writer in Campus Center Meeting Room 5.

Wong grew up in New Jersey in Monmouth County near Tinton Falls, where her family owned a Chinese Restaurant in a Mall Strip. She is a first-generation college student and also the first in her family to graduate from an American high school. She also reflected on how she moved around a lot, from New Jersey to New York to Hong Kong to Iowa, and now she is based in Seattle and has been living there for over 10 years.

Before she started, Wong started off by stating how shocked she was by the full house attendance. She was nervous but nevertheless glad to see so many faces. She started off with a poem that she jokingly said she “forgot that [she] wrote.” Her poem, “10 Alternate Endings,” talks about how her life could have had so many different endings than the one that she has now. Wong gave a quick background story about the poem she started off with. She stated how one day someone posted this poem that she wrote saying that people should give it a read. Ultimately, when she re-read it, she joked about how she was so surprised that it never made it into a book, but left off by saying, “it’s okay, it will be in the fourth one.” Wong read a couple of pieces from her memoir and talked about how she came up with some of these segments that made up her book. One thing that she never forgot to mention is how much she speaks in her mother’s voice when she writes her poems and pieces.

Towards the end when Wong was finished reading and giving backstory about her book, she had time for a small Q&A. When asked if she regrets moving away, she answered by saying “Ultimately, I had to move away to find my way back home. In many ways I think about moving back here.”

She also answered questions pertaining to what other careers she would have pursued had she not become a writer, stating that she “tried so many things besides writing, I tried different arts, biologies, but writing and storytelling always came back to me.” 

Wong also told the story about how when she was a baby, she always would reach towards books and just look at them and make her own stories even if she couldn’t read. She joked and said, “She was a writer even in the womb.” She then explained that even if you don’t know what you want to do, that’s real and that’s okay.

Wong left attendees with one final word of advice: “Be ready, don’t always rush yourself. You have to be ready to be vulnerable and let it out.”