Jo Koy Gets No Respect from Mom
/Book Review:Mixed Plate by Jo Koy
Dey Street, an imprint of William Morrow, HarperCollins, 2021.
Jo Koy’s Mixed Plate
One of the funniest stories depicts teen-aged Jo Koy smuggling 24 cans of Pepsi and a bucket of KFC Extra Crispy into a Tacoma mental institution. This story could only be hilarious in print because of the sad backstory that’s required to set up the punchline. No decent being would laugh at the loss of an older brother to the ravages of schizophrenia. But once we see that Robert, the brother Jo Koy worshipped as a boy, is never coming back, and realize he is hardly a sympathetic character given the physical abuse he inflicts on his family, we happily allow young Jo Koy the respite of a raucous spectacle and a bucket of KFC.
Telling It Like It Is
On the relatability scale, Jo Koy is off the charts. He puts to words the hard doses of reality keeping talented Filipinos from taking risks to succeed in entertainment. On why Filipinos become nurses, he writes, “To all you Filipino nurses out there, I’m not shitting on you for what you do. It’s a great job, great benefits, great money. I’m just saying it probably wasn’t your dream. That was your Filipino mom’s dream. She wanted you to be a nurse because she knew it was practical, responsible, safe.”
Mixed Plate is about a poor half-Filipino boy who, fatherless since age 13, spurns college and a managerial post at Foot Locker to pursue his dream of standup comedy. He throws away a lucrative job as a ’90s comedy impresario in Las Vegas and turns down Comedy Central to do it his way. And still wins!
Even as he sells out venues worldwide, has his movie Easter Sunday green-lit by Steven Spielberg, three Netflix specials and his “Josep” sitcom in production, he grieves that his mother, Josephine Magluyan, still doesn’t accept comedy as a legitimate career.
“Part of her still thinks of my comedy career as a hobby,” Jo Koy laments. “Entertainment can’t be a real job, doesn’t require real work or real sacrifice.” His mother told him: “That’s your life Josep! You’re funny, that’s what you do! What’s the big deal?”
“Jo Koy recalls, “There was no way in her mind she could ever be wrong about anything. It just wasn’t possible. She was right, she was always right, and that was reality.”
Authenticity on the Mic
Jo Koy’s road less traveled includes the standard fare of studying VHS recordings of Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy to perfect his timing and still bombing at clubs. The road winds and turns until he discovers that the audience finds stories about his family members funnier than broad observations he assumed would connect with Black and white audiences. The journey to this reckoning is dotted with the household names who define the state of comedy today.
Jo Koy was dining with Jon Lovitz when a drunken Andy Dick caused a melee. Tiffany Haddish babysat his son, Little Joe, during his sets at the Hollywood Laugh Factory. He shared the lineup with his buddy Kevin Hart “when he still drove an old Ford truck.” His decision to turn down Chelsea Handler’s invitation to be her sidekick on Chelsea Lately nearly destroyed a dear friendship.
Every step of the way, Jo Koy shares his success with his Filipino fans. One personal recollection involves an early super fan, a Filipino who attended his shows near Chicago during a dispiriting week Jo Koy should have been celebrating his son’s seventh birthday in Los Angeles.
“We Filipinos take a lot of pride in each other’s accomplishments in America,” he observes. “But I’ll be honest, this dude in St. Charles, Illinois—he was devoted even for us.” After a tiring show, the super fan asked him, “You want Filipino food?”
Jo Koy cherishes the night “my boy and his wife had me back at his place, and they cooked me one of the best dinners I’ve ever had in my life. We’re talking thin-sliced beef steak, stewed onions, and soy sauce with a hint of lemon. So delicious, and right there in the heart of the Midwest. A true home-cooked meal.”
Today Jo Koy is serving a Mixed Plate that tells us how great it is to be positively Filipino.
Mom Knows Best
Jo Koy (Photo by Austin Hargave)
The sentence above initially ended this book review, but I have to add an admission. When I started Mixed Plate, I questioned whether a Filipino could give an honest account of his family. Jo Koy acknowledges the penchant for tsismis or gossip within the Filipino-ruled Knights of Columbus group in his boyhood parish, but it’s all kept within the Filipino family.
When Jo Koy’s mother makes him throw away the first-ever Christmas gift from his non-Filipino grandparents, who had never accepted him because of his Filipino blood, he later admits, “I know what my mother was trying to show me. That my dad’s parents, even though they were technically related to me, weren’t my real family. My real family stuck together. My real family was brown, like me. My real family was the Filipino community… And she was right.”
Members tend to value the rabid loyalty within a Filipino family in retrospect. A true Filipino never says a bad word about a family member outside of the home. And every Filipino parent not named Imelda or Ferdinand Marcos is always right because every decision is guided solely by the best interests of the family.
We see this dynamic in Jo Koy’s mother. In high school, Jo Koy ignored his mother’s warnings against riding a motorcycle. A crash puts him in traction for five months. The trauma of almost losing him due to his disobedience estranges her from her son until a birthday celebration in the hospital.
Jo Koy recalls, “There was no way in her mind she could ever be wrong about anything. It just wasn’t possible. She was right, she was always right, and that was reality. As frustrating as that was for me, that same stubbornness, that same iron will, is probably also what has helped her to survive as a single immigrant mom in America. To this day, I’ve never heard her apologize for anything. Not once.”
Whenever Filipinos laugh at Jo Koy’s imitation of his mother swinging her “Louis Buitton” purse, the subtext streaming through the monologue is the realization that mom is always right. Jo Koy proves he’s a true Filipino because he believes it, too.
To sample Jo Koy:
Anthony Maddela is taking a break from his grant writer job in the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles projects of Watts. He’s overcoming a treatable form of cancer and sincerely appreciates your good thoughts and prayers.
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