Worldly Girls - (Essais) by Tamara Jong (Paperback)

About the Book

"With clear-eyed honesty and written in sparse yet searing prose, Jong collects the fragments of her unconventional childhood, with her busy schedule of Jehovah's Witness meetings, Bible study, and door-to-door ministering. She also details her emotionally distant father and alcoholic mother's tumultuous marriage, her deep yearnings to become a mother after the loss of her own, and her struggles with mental health. After corporate and spiritual burnout, and a suicide attempt at the age of thirty-two, Jong comes to understand that the strict religion she had long believed would protect her prevented her from pursuing her true sense of self. In a story that traverses a wide range of potent themes--including addiction, estrangement, grief, infertility, and forgiveness--the ultimate message of Worldly Girls is one of hope as Jong finds her own path to healing and belonging"--

Book Synopsis

Tamara Jong's powerful memoir documents the slow unravelling of her connection to her faith and the tragic history of her fractured family, shining a light into the dark corners of memory that have haunted her well into adulthood.

With clear-eyed honesty and written in sparse yet searing prose, Jong collects the fragments of her unconventional childhood, with her busy schedule of Jehovah's Witness meetings, Bible study, and door-to-door ministering. She also details her emotionally distant father and alcoholic mother's tumultuous marriage, her deep yearnings to become a mother after the loss of her own, and her struggles with mental health.

After corporate and spiritual burnout, and a suicide attempt at the age of thirty-two, Jong comes to understand that the strict religion she had long believed would protect her prevented her from pursuing her true sense of self. In a story that traverses a wide range of potent themes--including addiction, estrangement, grief, infertility, and forgiveness--the ultimate message of Worldly Girls is one of hope as Jong finds her own path to healing and belonging.

Review Quotes

"Worldly Girls unfolds like a series of controlled explosions, each essay detonating just enough certainty to reveal what lies beneath--the stubborn persistence of love amid doctrinal wreckage, the strange comfort found in abandoned rituals, and the peculiar freedom that comes from having nothing left to lose." --The New Quarterly

"Worldly Girls contains stand-alone essays that feel like fragments of a whole, a puzzle you only to realize is incomplete when you discover the missing pieces, what has been dropped, lost, or perhaps never packed into the box." --Junction Reads

"In Wordly Girls, [Jong's] striking debut memoir-in-essays, Jong unpacks her indoctrination and subsequent disillusionment with the religion that formed so much of her identity--as well as her adult struggles with depression, infertility and estrangement--with remarkable vulnerability." --Winnipeg Free Press

"In a story that traverses a wide range of potent themes--alcoholism, estrangement, grief, depression, infertility--the ultimate message becomes one of hope as Jong finds her own path to healing and belonging." --MER Bookshelf

"Jong is unflinching in her exploration of grief and while she guards her privacy, grace and her dignity, she lets the reader into the room of loss and longing, allowing us to sit beside her." --Lisa De Nikolits, A Turn of Phrase Substack

"Jong responds to her years as a believer with curiosity, openness, and nuance. For some readers, Jong's temerity will be what gives the book its sparkle. She writes not as an authority, but as a student of her own life." --McKenzie Watson-Fore, Full Stop

"Thoughtful meditations highlight not only Jong's gritty tenacity but also serve to document her ongoing endeavour to live an authentic and meaningful life." --The Miramichi Reader

"In Worldly Girls, Tamara Jong writes with clear-eyed honesty and emotional intelligence about the intertwined ties of family and religion. More than a memoir, this book is a tribute to women everywhere who struggle with love, depression, our relationships with our mothers and with motherhood itself. In other words, Worldly Girls is for all of us." --Jen Sookfong Lee, author of The Hunger We Pass Down

"Tamara Jong has written a deliciously subversive book about ideologies which allow us to survive while also imprisoning us. A brave set of storied memories about growing up with a Nova Scotian mother who raised her as a Jehovah Witness and a Chinese Immigrant father who resisted, this book is about growing up in the in-between space: what we anchor to when there are few absolutes and how we move beyond the ties which bind to find our own path forward. This book is an ode to the examined life and a roadmap to ultimately defining who we are on our terms, informed but not bound by our ancestry. A delightful addition to the memoir canon." --Annahid Dashtgard, author of Bones of Belonging: Finding Wholeness in a White World

"Tamara Jong's memoir Wordly Girls is a glistening mosaic of memory. Arranged in sharp and vibrant fragments, Jong explores the jagged divisions that break and shape us, and the love that can unite us beyond faith, time, and life. This story is sharp and soft; a razor's edge to your tender heart. An unforgettable read." --Hollay Ghadery, award-winning author of Fuse

About the Author

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.