Worldly Girls by Tamara Jong | The Miramichi Reader

Worldly Girls by Tamara Jong is a skillfully written memoir about the foray she and her mother made into the Jehovah’s Witness religion, and her ultimate coming of age journey. The first-person narrative is both raw and vulnerable, as memories and reflections are shared in twenty short, powerful essays. Headings intrigue with titles such as: Triptych, What We Get to Keep; Cataloguing Grief; Tell Me a Ghost Story; and Leave-Taking. As a sorting structure of such rich and painful accounts, the headings stand out as a guide for others who might wish to document their own stories.

Jong’s need to find her place in the world is underscored by the way in which she is treated as a mixed-race individual.

When you’re mixed-race someone’s always telling you who you’re not. People ask if I’m Chinese, what I am, where I’m from? If I tell them I’m from Montreal, they say, “no, before that.” (I want to say my mom’s uterus. Or her vagina. But I can’t say impolite things.)  

What they’re really asking when they ask me where I’m from is who are my parents – what are my parents – and it feels like a singling out, an othering.  It feels like I don’t belong.

When her mother becomes a Jehovah’s Witness, Jong similarly embraces the church as a way to find both meaning and emotional safety. Although she later leaves the faith’s teachings behind, she comments on the lasting impact of her connections there:

Now, away from the pang of God guilt hovers around the back of my brain, and I wonder if I’ve made a mistake leaving the Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was a safe place for a mixed-race person like me. I wasn’t an outsider.

Finding meaning and purpose in her life is overshadowed by a somewhat dysfunctional family unit and although Jong builds loving networks around her, she is plagued with both grief and addiction issues. The later mid-life struggles she documents include heartbreak, a suicide attempt and fertility issues.

Jong strives to come to terms with her parents’ clay feet and the trauma that is part of her past. When her beloved stepdaughter asks for a Ouija board, Jong’s reflection is revelatory:

Avery and I still want something from our mothers, something they could not give us in life. If we conjure them up, what will our grief look like once it truly manifests?

Such thoughtful meditations highlight not only Jong’s gritty tenacity but also serve to document her ongoing endeavour to live an authentic and meaningful life.

TAMARA JONG is a Tiohtià:ke (Montréal) born writer of Chinese and European ancestry. Her work has been published in the Humber Literary Review, Room Magazine, and The Fiddlehead, and has been both long and shortlisted for various creative nonfiction prizes. She is a graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, and a former member of Room Magazine’s collective. She currently lives and works on Treaty 3 territory, the occupied and ancestral lands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinabewaki, Attiwonderonk, and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (Guelph, ON). Worldly Girls is her first book

Publisher: Book*hug Press (September 9 2025)
Paperback 8″ x 5″ | 192 pages
ISBN: 9781771669504

Lucy E. M. Black

Website

Lucy E.M. Black (she/her/hers) is the author of The Marzipan Fruit Basket, Eleanor Courtown, Stella’s Carpet, The Brickworks and Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth. A Quilting of Scars will be released October 2025. Her award-winning short stories have been published in Britain, Ireland, USA and Canada. She is a dynamic workshop presenter, experienced interviewer and freelance writer. She lives with her partner in the small lakeside town of Port Perry, Ontario, the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island, First Nations.