Advanced
Error loading page.
Try refreshing the page. If that doesn't work, there may be a network issue, and you can use our self test page to see what's preventing the page from loading.
Learn more about possible network issues or contact support for more help.
Title details for Why Didn't You Tell Me? by Carmen Rita Wong - Available

Why Didn't You Tell Me?

by Carmen Rita Wong
Carmen Rita Wong
Audiobook
Listen to a sample Listen to a sample
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.
Expand title description text
Publisher: Books on Tape Edition: Unabridged

OverDrive Listen audiobook

  • ISBN: 9780593587980
  • File size: 238313 KB
  • Release date: July 12, 2022
  • Duration: 08:16:29

MP3 audiobook

  • ISBN: 9780593587980
  • File size: 238347 KB
  • Release date: July 12, 2022
  • Duration: 08:22:25
  • Number of parts: 9
Loading
Loading

Formats

OverDrive Listen audiobook
MP3 audiobook

subjects

Biography & Autobiography Family & Relationships Nonfiction

Languages

English

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.
Expand title description text
Biography & Autobiography Family & Relationships Nonfiction