The nine effervescent travel-based essays in journalist Connie Wang's first book, Oh My Mother!, upturn stereotypes of suffering immigrants and American dreamers while deftly tracing her family's adjustment to life in the U.S. As Wang explains, the Chinese phrase "wŏde mā ya," literally "oh my mother," is equivalent to the interjection "oh my god." Qing Li, her mother, has been Wang's inspiration as a first-generation immigrant; she's been "the angel and devil on my shoulders, the little voice in my head, and the creative muse that I have pushed against and climbed upon."

Qing gave up her editing career to join her husband, Dexin, getting his physics Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska. Dexin's participation in Tiananmen Square protests precluded their permanent return to China, so they soon sent for two-year-old Connie, too. As the family moved around the Midwest for Dexin's work, they embraced all-American phenomena such as road trips, timeshares, Disney World, and Las Vegas. Wang contrasts adult life in New York City and Los Angeles with her upbringing, and gains perspective on return visits to China: "it felt strange to see my parents as social, popular people." In two standout essays, "Fancy Things" and "R&R," she celebrates a shared love of fashion, as she and Qing tour the opulent Palace of Versailles, and marvels at her mother treating lifelong insomnia with marijuana while in Amsterdam. As a friend observes to her, "Qing's always been a trendsetter." Affectionate and incisive, these mother-daughter essays illuminate family relationships and life across cultures.

lovey memoir about a mom who was a hero. I loved the writing and look forward to more (maybe fiction) from this author.

They say reading can be like looking out of a window or into a mirror. This book of essays tells stories that are eerily similar to the experiences I had growing up with immigrant Chinese parents. Every immigrant story is different, yet the many parallels make me feel seen and heard and not so alone.

Her stories are earnest and genuine, painting a true picture of her childhood and the many formative interactions she had with her mother. Wang's writing is entertaining, humorous, and unabashedly transparent. As the book progresses, the stories get more literary and, in my opinion, less compelling. However, the focus is always on the evolving relationship between mother and daughter and the difficult situations they face together.

Book review: Memoir about mothers, daughters tugs on heartstrings
Ashley Riggleson Jun 10, 2023

I knew the bare minimum going into Connie Wang’s début memoir, “Oh My Mother! A Memoir in Nine Adventures,” and I was not sure what to expect. This warm and touching book tugged on my heartstrings, and I am sure I will remember it for a long time.

As the memoir opens, readers learn a little bit about Wang’s relationship with her mother, and the title of the book resonates quickly and deeply. Then she takes us back in time describing her mother’s life in China and as a new immigrant, and recounting her own story of her childhood in which she is a young Asian-American girl trying to reconcile the various parts of her identity and struggling to determine who she wants to be. In all her recollections, her mother Qing plays a pivotal role, and Wang paints a portrait of a of a complex, independent, imperfect but ultimately loving woman who, though she did not want to leave China, comes into her own in the United States.

As Wang grows, it is easy to see her mother’s influence in the person she becomes. As a fashion writer, Wang travels all over the world, both for work and pleasure. Time passes and it seems that the Wangs have achieved the “American Dream.” They are comfortable financially and can travel around the world. And Wang reflects on her relationship with her mother which, though flawed, is ultimately loving. The two of them grow together. And although “Oh My Mother!” is clearly a story about mothers and daughters, it is also about legacy, as Connie’s eventual pregnancy causes them to consider their connection on a deeper level.

“Oh My Mother!” captured my heart in the opening pages, and it did not let go. While Wang and her mother were not always likeable, I was always intrigued to learn more, to read more and to see how their relationship would develop over the years.

Since I am a seasoned reader of immigrant narratives, I usually know what to expect when I request one for review. But Wang’s story struck me as fresh and different from the outset. This book, the publicist pointed out to me, is a perfect Mother’s Day read, and gave me “all the feels.” As such, the ending, like the beginning, struck with particular beauty, and clarity, and I left feeling satisfied and inspired.

This review was originally printed in The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg, VA.

My desk was situated near Connie's when we worked at Refinery29, and I recall being in awe of her confidence and empathy during phone interviews. I learned so much about how to be a skilled and conscientious reporter simply by listening in (open office plans have their advantages). This memoir is an absolute treasure! I saw my own relationship with my Chinese mother reflected in Qing (though mine would be much more ambivalent about Magic Mike), and Connie elegantly captured so many nuances of a mother-daughter dynamic. I found myself in tears at the ending. It was utterly perfect, and I loved every word.

'Oh My Mother' is a memoir-in-essays that centers journalist Connie Wang's relationship with her mother. Each essay probes a single topic and how it reveals another facet of their Asian American mother-daughter relationship. Complex mother-daughter relationships are like bait to me. Essay collections are also bait to me. I'm predisposed to love them.

So I wonder if my issue with this book is one of marketing. The cover flap calls the book a mix of ‘Minor Feelings’ and ‘Trick Mirror’. Reader, it is not. This is not a book of ideas—the engagement with the essay topics (Disneyland, fashion, marijuana, magic mike) is mostly superficial. The prose is workable, but artless. The curiosity that seethes at the center of the aforementioned texts is absent.

Here’s my primary issue with this book: it lacks an obsession with its topics, lacks the questing impulse to probe and synthesize I feel is essential to good essaying. What tries to be funny often comes off as judgmental (her mother “worship[s] watered-down imitations of the fashion I saw”; the author spends several pages describing the vulgarities of Chinese tourists and considering how her mother is similar to them because she’s... wearing slippers). What tries to be eclectic comes off as mishmash (At one point, there’s a random list of tips on how to pack one’s bag efficiently that might more appropriately belong in a Cosmo ‘listicle’). There’s also a question I had that was left conspicuously absent: why does the daughter call her mother Qing, rather than her mother (especially in a book literally called ‘oh my mother’)? Does she call her Qing to her face? This book had several craft choices like these that felt bewildering to me as a reader.

That’s not to say the book didn’t stumble into the occasional insight, such as the authors point that the Irish name ‘Bowen’ became increasingly common among Asian American men, and a moving moment of empathy in which the author considered her mother typing a text that “must have taken her nearly an hour to compose, typed out with one finger.”

Unfortunately, I found this book to be a bit shallow. It’s the kind of mainstream-oriented writing on Asian American identity that’s been rehashed a thousand times before, while adding little to the conversation; the kind of platitudinal Asian American literature that essays questioning the state of said literature might cite.

There is one salvation in this memoir in essays, and it is the self-interested, individualistic, capricious Qing herself, who curls up “like a shrimp” in a Disneyworld-adjacent hotel when the narrator makes a throwaway comment about copying her pants and prepares $200 in $1 bills for a live Magic Mike show. For a book centered around a mother, Qing is absent for large swaths of time, which the author fills with meh writing about Versailles and how timeshare schemes work. Upon reading the book, one has the distinct sense that if Qing were to tell her own story it might then have the strangeness and ferocity it deserves instead of being diluted down by her daughter into a workable but ultimately forgettable memoir.