
Why Didn't You Tell Me?
A Memoir
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $18.00
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Carmen Rita Wong
-
By:
-
Carmen Rita Wong
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
“Riveting . . . [Wong] tells her story in vivid conversational prose that will make readers feel they’re listening to a master storyteller on a long car trip. . . . Hers is a hero’s journey.”—The 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 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.
And when those secrets were revealed, bringing clarity to so much of Carmen’s life, it was too late for answers. When her mother passed away, Carmen wanted to shake her soul by its shoulders and demand: Why didn’t you tell me?
A 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. 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.
Listeners also enjoyed...




















Interview: Carmen Rita Wong and Her Search for the Whole Truth
People who viewed this also viewed...


















Thank you…
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fantástic listen
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Finally we can be out in the open about our family history
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Amazing story loved it
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Ok.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wow
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Read by the author with passion, humor, anger, and grief. 5 stars on every level!
It’s Complicated
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Highly Recommend!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wong's writing is so compelling, I could listen to her describe the most mundane of chores and hold onto every word
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Couldn’t stop listening
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.