“What am I without religion? What am I without the safety of us?” (Jong 119).
Tamara Jong explores her life growing up as a devout, practicing Jehovah’s Witness while also understanding the instability of her childhood from her father’s emotional distance to her mother’s alcohol addiction as she comes to lose and understand herself in her debut memoir.
I hadn’t heard of this book before hearing Tamara Jong herself speak about it at gritLit last month. I was fascinated to hear her speak about how she experienced a loss of identity when she left the Jehovah’s Witnesses because they, religion, and her faith were such big parts of her life that she didn’t know who she was without those things in her life. It made me realize that she had named something I’d experienced when deciding to no longer be a practicing Catholic. While both religions are very different, I had never heard someone grieve and talk about the loss of identity when leaving a religion after being devout for so much of their life. I felt a kinship and urge to read her book because of that.
Jong’s memoir is unique in that it is a memoir in essays, meaning that the book doesn’t follow a linear path and that at points certain information is repeated or said again as if it has never been said before. I don’t believe I’ve read a memoir in this style before so it made for an interesting reading experience because we had snippets of Jong sharing her life in different aspects there is also a lot of information not shared. For example, while her husband is mentioned a lot we don’t get to see how they met, their wedding day, or know much about their relationship, but that is also not what the memoir is about. The format of a memoir in multiple essays is interesting because it does mean that unlike a more conventional memoir, Jong can choose which parts of her life she wants to talk about instead of the book becoming a tell-all, and I thought the essay format suited her voice.
I really enjoyed Wordly Girls and learning about Jong’s upbringing and her search for herself outside of religion and in regards to motherhood, which was also shaped by her religious upbringing. While different from mine, I thought this was a vulnerable, much needed topic to explore because I do think there are readers out there (like me) who relate and are looking for someone to talk about this because despite the many valid discussions to be had about aspects of religion being bad, there is also no doubt that many people feel safe in religion, many people find community there and that it complicates things while also shaping people’s identities.
I am so happy Wordly Girls found it’s way to me. I hope Jong writes much more because her words and insights have touched me, and I’m sure they will make many others feel less lonely as they find who they are now.
Publication: September 9 2025
Publisher: Book*Hug Press
Pages: 216 pages (Paperback)
Source: Owned
Genre: Non Fiction, Memoir, Canadian
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
Tamara Jong’s debut memoir is a moving portrait of trauma, addiction, grief, and forgiveness. In sparse yet searing prose, Jong documents the tragic history of her fractured family and her fraught relationship with her strict Jehovah’s Witness religion. In doing so, she shines a light into the dark corners of memory that have haunted her well into adulthood.
With clear-eyed honesty, Jong collects the fragments of her unstable and 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 indoctrination into and later rejection of her faith, 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 religion she 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—alcoholism, estrangement, grief, depression, infertility—the ultimate message becomes one of hope as Jong finds her own path to healing and belonging.
Detailing the slow unravelling of one woman’s connection to her faith, Worldly Girls is a brave journey into the truth and will offer solace to anyone who has wrestled with the ghosts of the past.
Sarah O'Connor 