“This is a vivid and surprising memoir, bracing and bright. She is a master storyteller, whose voice is a gift to this world.” -Catherine Burns, artistic director of The Moth a propulsive pursuit of the truth and the way it’s shaped this writer’s life.” - Literary Hub “A stunner about race, culture and the deeper meaning of family.” - People Hers is a hero’s journey.” - The New York Times Book Review tells her story in vivid conversational prose that will make readers feel they’re listening to a master storyteller on a long car trip. Why Didn’t You Tell Me? is a riveting and poignant story of Carmen’s experience of race and culture in America and how they shape who we think we are. When her mother passed away, Carmen wanted to shake her soul by its shoulders and demand: Why didn’t you tell me?Ī former national television host, advice columnist, and professor, Carmen searches to understand who she really is as she discovers her mother’s hidden history, facing the revelations that seep out.

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.Īs Carmen entered this new world with her new family-Lupe and Marty quickly had four more children-her 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.Īnd when those secrets were revealed, bringing clarity to so much of Carmen’s life, it was too late for answers. 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. A secret that shaped my life and the lives of everyone around me in ways she could not have imagined.Ĭarmen 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.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: PopSugar, Kirkus Reviews Hers is a hero’s journey.”- The New York Times Book Review An immigrant mother’s long-held secrets upend her daughter’s understanding of her family, her identity, and her place in the world in this powerful and dramatic memoir

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