Description
An immigrant mothers longheld secrets upend her daughters understanding of her family her identity and her place in the world in this powerful and dramatic memoir
Riveting Wong tells her story in vivid conversational prose that will make readers feel theyre listening to a master storyteller on a long car trip Hers is a heros journeyThe New York Times Book Review
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR PopSugar Kirkus Reviews
My mother carried a powerful secret A secret that shaped my life and the lives of everyone around me in ways she could not have imagined
Carmen Rita Wong has always craved a sense of belonging First as a toddler in a warm room full of Black and brown Latina women like her mother Lupe cheering her dancing during her childhood in Harlem And in Chinatown where her immigrant father Papi Wong a hustler would show her and her older brother off in opulent restaurants decorated in red and gold Then came the almost exclusively white playgrounds of New Hampshire after her mother married her stepfather Marty who seemed to be the ideal of the white American dad
As Carmen entered this new world with her new familyLupe and Marty quickly had four more childrenher relationship with her mother became fraught with tension suspicion and conflict explained only years later by the secrets her mother had kept for so long
And when those secrets were revealed bringing clarity to so much of Carmens life it was too late for answers When her mother passed away Carmen wanted to shake her soul by its shoulders and demand Why didnt you tell me
A former national television host advice columnist and professor Carmen searches to understand who she really is as she discovers her mothers hidden history facing the revelations that seep out Why Didnt You Tell Me is a riveting and poignant story of Carmens experience of race and culture in America and how they shape who we think we are
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