Teresa Wong's search for family connection led to her graphic memoir All Our Ordinary Stories
The Calgary-based author discussed her book on Bookends with Mattea Roach
In the graphic memoir All Our Ordinary Stories, Teresa Wong uses spare black-and-white illustrations and thought-provoking prose to unpack how intergenerational trauma and resilience can shape our identities.
Starting with her mother's stroke a decade ago, Wong takes a journey through time and place to find the origin of her feelings of disconnection from her parents. The series of stories carefully examine the cultural, language, historical and personality issues that have been barriers to intimacy in her family.
"Wong's new graphic memoir reminded me just how fraught family history can be and some of the perils and joys of trying to piece together a family lineage over many generations," said Mattea Roach in the introduction to their conversation on Bookends.
Wong is the author of the graphic memoir Dear Scarlet: The Story of My Postpartum Depression, which was a finalist for The City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize and longlisted for Canada Reads 2020. Her comics have appeared in The Believer, The New Yorker and The Walrus. She teaches memoir and comics at Gotham Writers Workshop and was the former writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary. CBC Books named her a writer to watch in 2019.
On Bookends, Wong and Roach discussed the art of cartooning and the intricate, often challenging journey of piecing together family history.
Mattea Roach: Where does the title All Our Ordinary Stories come from?
Teresa Wong: The title comes from a bunch of different things and one is actually a story I tell in the book about a time when I was in my mid-twenties and asking my mother to tell me more about her escape from China and wondering why she had never really talked about it. And she said, 'Why would I talk about that? It's such an ordinary story.'
When you really think about it, each of those stories is extremely extraordinary, too- Teresa Wong
And I remember thinking, 'What are you talking about? You swam to Hong Kong from China. Like that is not ordinary.' But to her, it was, because she knew a whole bunch of people who were going through that kind of thing.
It just made me think about how both ordinary and extraordinary lives, particularly of immigrants, are. It is an ordinary thing to pick up your life and move to another country because so many people do it, especially here in Canada. But then when you really think about it, each of those stories is extremely extraordinary, too.
MR: What was driving this desire to learn more and understand your parents?
TW: It's a drive to connect. The core of our relationship is disconnection and a feeling of distance. And from the time I was a pretty young child until now, I've always wanted to connect more with them. So when I left home and got married in my mid-twenties, I just realized, if I don't do something, this is not going to happen.
I thought the key was in the stories. I don't know exactly why I thought that, but I thought if I could get to the root of it all or uncover why or figure out other things about them that could explain why we were the way we were, that that would drive to a better connection. I don't know if that is true or whether that actually happened.
But I think writing this book changed me, changed my perspective on that, and gave me a sense of acceptance and understanding that maybe that's not going to happen.
MR: How do you reconcile with the gaps in your knowledge about your family history as you put together this graphic novel?
TW: I think part of it was just realizing that there's no way of truly knowing them or my family history. There will always be gaps, there will always be distances. It's really up to me now to decide what I do with that going forward. And part of it was making this book.
In making the book, I was kind of making myself, in a way.- Teresa Wong
I'm really proud that I was able to kind of put all these stories down and uncover as much as I actually did. In making the book, I was kind of making myself, in a way, shoring myself up in terms of understanding that these stories, these people, they contribute to who I am as a person and that I can draw on them, for examples of resilience and courage, but also learn from their mistakes as well.
That I could do better, when connecting with my own children and hopefully not letting some of the trauma that has occurred in the past trickle on into the future.
MR: Do you feel like working on this project has brought you closer to your parents in any way, even though obviously there's not going to be this complete understanding, but has it shifted your relationship with them?
TW: It's shifted the way that I approach them and kind of my understanding of how capable they actually are of being the parents that I wanted and to also let that go, to understand that people come from a lot of brokenness and and sometimes that can't be fixed in a lifetime. Sometimes it takes many generations.
MR: What do you hope your kids will get out of this memoir being out in the world?
TW: I hope they have something that they can look back on, when they want it, to understand how at least part of their family got this way and how their mom got this way and what was important to their mom.
Not all of my kids have read it. Only one of them was interested. They're tweens and teens right now. And so I think when they get older, they're going to kind of naturally become curious because a lot of us do. We get to a point in our 20s or even later where we wonder who we are, really, where did we come from? And so I hope when they reach that point, that this book will be a good resource and inspiration to them.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was produced by Lisa Mathews.
