Dear Girls summary

It’s a cliché but it’s true: if you want to get out of your comfort zone, there’s nothing better than going abroad. When we travel, we learn things about other people and cultures that we never would have discovered just sitting in a classroom. 

This is especially true when you actually spend some real time in a place that’s far from home – something Ali had the chance to do when she studied at the University of Hawai’i for two months during her sophomore year at UCLA.

We all get scrutinized by others, and people often make assumptions about us based on the flimsiest of impressions. For Asian Americans like Ali, this is a frequent occurrence. Throughout her career as a comedian, Ali has had to contend with plenty of outright racism and absurd stereotypes, not to mention the misogynistic comments with which any woman has to deal. 

She’s also had to put up with being undermined as a female comedian. When Ali was in her early twenties, she climbed on stage in Honolulu only to hear a man in the audience immediately groan, “Oh no, this is gonna suck” – based on nothing but her gender and his own sexism.

No matter what anyone tells you, creating a career that you’re proud of takes hard work and hustle. When you’re first starting out in any profession, there’ll be times when you have to do things that you dislike, work for people that you don’t necessarily admire, and offer your skills for next-to-no money. 

In her early days as a stand-up comedian and actress, there was no end to Ali’s willingness to hustle to build a career. But this wasn’t easy. By 2012, she was stretched incredibly thin – while working as a TV actor, she was also touring as a stand-up comedian in circumstances that were far from ideal.

Everyone has a story about where they come from. These stories – good or bad, short and sweet, or filled with twists – often make up the foundation of who we are.

Ali’s story started with her relatives immigrating to the United States –  her mother came from Vietnam, and her paternal grandfather from China. Reflecting on these journeys and the fortitude they demanded has helped her find the strength to face obstacles throughout her life. 

Life isn’t perfect, and neither are human beings. Everyone has flaws, quirks, and eccentricities, along with their strengths and talents. The key to building successful relationships, though, is to accept and cherish people for all these qualities. 

But let’s just take a second to be honest with ourselves here. Finding a person you’re willing to accept completely doesn’t happen overnight. You may have to experience a lot of what you don’t want before you can find what you’re really looking for.

We all think we know what we want our lives to look like. We make grand plans and lofty goals that we assume will make us happy. But life doesn’t necessarily care about our plans, and the world often throws curveballs at us. In the end, the only thing we can do is try to adapt.

Before Ali became a stay-at-home mom, she fantasized about all the leisurely things that she’d do with her day once she had kids. Glancing at celebrity Jessica Seinfeld’s Instagram feed, Ali imagined her time being filled with baking and trips to the spa. 

Most of us have heard our parents talk about their experiences of raising children. The 3 a.m. wake-up calls, diaper changes, tears, travel back and forth to soccer games, and the conversations with angry teachers are just some of the more challenging aspects of being a parent. 

In some cases, excitable, soon-to-be moms and dads will be overly optimistic about the kind of parents they’ll be and what their family life will look like. Ali was one of these – when she was pregnant for the first time, she fantasized about all the different things she wanted to do and be as a parent, from raising her children on a whole-foods diet to reading to them every night. She soon found out, however, that these goals were not realistic.