“Hue women are the most beautiful and have the most endearing accent,” she says breathlessly. “They think it’s ok to say that!”

She straightens indignantly and waggles her finger at me, “Wait until you see an old lady pop a squat on the street and you won’t think they’re so hot anymore!”

Ali Wong: Race-Ist

Dear Ali:
The Miss Chinatown USA Pageant is a historical and cultural treasure for San Francisco. How dare you make fun of it and say that it only has magic tricks, juggling and violins sounding like cats having anal sex? You should be ashamed of yourself!
—Go Miss Chinatown

Dear Go Miss Chinatown:
I still steal toilet paper from my parents’ house. There’s a lot more things that I need to be ashamed of.
Ali

*

Race underlines a lot of Ali’s jokes. She’s figured out the weaknesses and strengths of the various ethnic communities with which she interacts and lays them out on the table.

“I think it’s refreshing that Ali is a hilarious comic who doesn’t fall back on making fun of FOB accents in order to get a cheap laugh. At the same time, she’s not shy about making fun of race issues and pushing us to the edge of comfort, where we think as well as laugh,” says Bao Phi, a nationally-known Vietnamese poet and activist who has shared the stage with Ali.

“People don’t realize how white our world is,” says Ali. She shares with me a joke she plans to unveil at APAture, an annual Asian-American, multidisciplinary arts festival in San Francisco. “I will stick my finger in a guy’s ass... and go past the rice line!”

I chuckle at her defiant finger in the air, while Ali continues, “White audiences won’t get it but the Asian-American crowd roars. It’s a small part of the [Asian American] story but when they can laugh together and acknowledge that story, and say, Yes, we are a community and can relate to each other in that way, it’s important.”

By understanding the hidden weaknesses of a group, she also understands their strength. Instead of being the butt of others’ jokes, Ali turns the tables, makes the pervasive Asian penis joke an insider joke around which Asian Americans can rally. It doesn’t end with Asian penises. Ali Wong has beef with penises of all kinds.

“A lot of people say humor is a very masculine quality. It’s always balls bang this, balls bang that, my penis is so hard or so huge or so flaccid. But no one ever makes vagina jokes. When you talk about it, people act like it’s extra gross, but it’s not.”

Ali believes in her Asian-American sisters. Just this month, she traveled across the United States in support of women-centered causes. She headlined GirlFest in Hawaii, which was a multi-day festival of films, poetry slams and panel discussions designed to empower women against rape, abuse and violence, before flying to Los Angeles, where she performed at the National Asian Pacific Women’s Forum 10th Anniversary Gala which honored “Fierce Sisters” like activist and Nobel Peace Prize nominee Yuri Kochiyama.

The experience of being surrounded with strong women was uplifting. “When I’m in the green room with men, it’s like, ‘This other day this bitch sucked my dick and started crying because she was so happy.’ At Girlfest, the green room was all women. It was different, in good way. We all got along and everyone was super smart. It was so much more comfortable. Everyone was telling vagina jokes the whole time.”

>next

[Recommend this page]