I, as a mixed race woman, found many things to relate to and love about this book and Carmen’s writing. I’ve bought copies for friends and no idea how I forgot to write a review for this!

This book was painful to read but beautiful. I don't know how Carmen Rita Wong navigated all the trauma. Such a powerful book.

I started this book but didn’t get 1/2 way through. It just didn’t hold my interest. I grew tired of the blame against other ethnicities and the lack of personal introspection Wong exhibited.

I love memoirs and I love family secrets so I was excited about this one. Wong tells her story of growing up mix-raced in a largely white, upper middle class, suburban community. As if that wasn’t challenging enough, she describes life with an unreliable, mostly absent father, a narcissistic, erratic mother, and a stepfather who left her feeling like an outsider . This was very easy to identify with. It was very emotional and written well.

This book is a grippingly honest, somewhat painful look at the author’s childhood and the secrets kept from her.

It's always a little difficult to rate memoirs since I feel like they can offer something different to everybody. But I really enjoyed Carmen Rita Wong's writing style and story. The main theme of this memoir is identity and secrets. However, I felt like there was too much emphasis on the secret between mother and daughter at the beginning of the memoir when it took so long to get to it.

As a young girl, Carmen loved the interaction with her Dominican mother’s family, the excitement and dancing, and the food. Visits with her Chinese father Peter were also exciting, eating at traditional Chinese restaurants along with her brother Alex, recognizing her father had some kind of status because he had a car in New York City. Soon enough, though, Carmen’s mother Lupe married an Italian man named Marty, and the family moved to New Hampshire, where Alex and Carmen were the only “ethnic” children in school. Lupe and Marty had four more children, all girls, and Carmen tried desperately to fit in, at school and also at home.

Carmen finished college and returned to New York, working as an assistant for Money magazine, a topic Marty was fascinated by. Although Carmen was knowledgeable and well-spoken, anchoring a weekly television program, she was still seen as an outsider because of her ethnicity. Around the time that Carmen learned of her mother’s cancer diagnosis, she had been told by Marty that he was her biological father, and Carmen lost her sense of identity once again. No longer a Chinese-Dominican American, she was now half Italian instead.

While I found this memoir interesting, I was expecting something different. I thought there would be more about Carmen locating her biological father and finding a strong identity in her newly discovered heritage, and I was disappointed in that. The memoir has a lot about the ethnicity of both Lupe’s and Peter’s families, and how Marty’s Italian heritage was seen as a step up simply because he was white. Being one of a very few women of color in a professional setting reinforced that for Carmen. Her childhood experiences of not being white enough/too brown were compounded by similar events at college and in the workplace. I just felt the book was more centered on the effects of racism in Carmen’s life than on the central question implied by the title.

Why Didn't You Tell Me? by Carmen Rita Wong is a compelling memoir that covers topics of family, secrets, race, and class. Along with the author, we explore her Chinese/Dominican identity. Rating memoirs is always a bit awkward, but I will share that this is one I'd recommend to a friend.

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for sharing this book with me. All thoughts are my own.

There is much to enjoy in this memoir, but something about the approach to the narrative did not resonate with me. Wong is a wonderful writer and she tells a story of confused heritage that starts with her understanding from birth that she is half Chinese and half Dominican. She beautifully describes her cultural experiences growing up in New York with her Dominican family all around her and the trips to Chinatown with her father for food in a basement restaurant with ducks in the windows. This was the book at its best. Her mother divorces and remarries and the family moves to New Hampshire, where they are very much the minority in a homogenous white place, their dark skin making teachers set the bar low for them.

So the five star part of the book is the story itself, but a lot of the time, Wong discussed her trauma as her beliefs about her family and her life unfold, but moved from part to part of the story in ways that were more general descriptions of what happened that did not themselves make us connect to her. So you hear about a lot of pain and her discussing her pain and her relationship with her parents, but when she is with them, unlike the first part of the novel, you don't really experience Wong in situ. It's like she is outside looking in, unlike the New York part of the book, but she does not convey that this matches how she felt. A memoir requires connection. I thought this story and this person deserved it, but that she chopped it up in a manner where we could not feel her pain or put ourselves in her shoes. It lost its authenticity. I could recommend this book for the story.

A memoir said to reveal many family secrets over a lifetime.. I'm not sure if I really got what I thought I was going to get out of this one though that did sound super interesting to me initially. It was about identity and intergenerational trauma, but I thought we were going to focus much more on the mystery of who her father was. Still a good memoir, but not as moving as I believed it would be. Maybe I should have gone into this one with less knowledge and expectations. That mindset might have let me enjoy this much more than I actually did in the end.

It's always a bit odd to review a memoir, so I'll say that Wong's life has certainly been interesting and I thought the book was well-written and engaging.

Thanks so much to the publisher and to NetGalley for giving me access to this book. This memoir was intense! I think that anyone who likes to hear true life tales will enjoy this book. I could not put it down! Strong recommend from me!

I love memoirs and I love family secrets so I was excited about this one. I liked it a lot but I found it a little odd that the author hinted at the secret early on but didn't really get into it until; much later in the book. I felt like it threw off the pacing because I wanted to learn more about that and there was a lot to get through before we got there. The whole book was good and i loved the peek into her life and thoughts but when you set something up and make it the focus of the book, you need to either tell it up front or sprinkle it a little more evenly.

The foundation of this memoir is a momentous secret held by a mother from her daughter. The story attempts to unwind a daughter’s confusion stemming from her mother’s silence, which, when uncovered, affects Wong’s core identity. By telling a largely chronological story, Wong begins from her childhood, where she was initially raised in her mother, Lupe’s, Dominican culture in New York City, along with Chinese from her father, Papi. She then moves to New Hampshire, where both her Dominican and Chinese cultures fall away in favor of suburban America. In the midst of living with a volatile, complex, and moody mother, Wong works hard to be successful and return to her true home, which is New York City.

As evidenced by the book and chapter titles, Wong aches to know the reason for her mother’s baffling choice. While the secret is compelling, and Wong’s story certainly has interesting aspects, the memoir lacks the depth of wrestling with moral ambiguity and nuance. While there are themes of racism and sexism at play too, the emotional core of Wong’s story is her relationship with her mother. I sense Wong used the memoir form to convey her complicated feelings about this relationship, but they do not reach full expression.

Perhaps Wong has not fully processed her emotions yet, awaiting translation to word form. The story raises a question about whether a cultural identity is fixed or can mutate over time. This is a question that is becoming increasingly important due to DNA tests. People are constantly finding out who they are is actually different than what they were told. The situation presents a genuine crisis of identity. It can raise feelings of blame, anger, disorientation, isolation, and sadness.

The relationship that is most memorable and affecting is actually between Wong and her brother, Alex. While Wong had four younger sisters, none of them are specifically named in the memoir, but Wong’s admiration and love for her brother is evident. It appears Alex provided support and stability for Wong in an emotionally draining household. There are other people, such as Wong’s stepfather and grandmother, that play important roles in Wong’s life as well.

Ultimately, this was an interesting story, but much of the depth was left unsaid. In the future, maybe Wong can untangle the complexity.

This book wasn't for me. I wanted to like it, I just couldn't get into it. I'm sure others will enjoy this it just wasn't for me.

Why Didn't You Tell Me? A Memoir by Carmen Rita Wong. This was 230 pages long and full of Carmen’s main events in her life. I knew little about her background. Examples; Chinese and Dominican lives in the USA.
I can’t even imagine what she went through and found her mothers story fascinating. I certainly don’t condone what she did but was amazed at how determined she was to make it in America.
CRW will share her birth, the many men in her life and her close relationships with her sisters. And then she’ll drop a bomb and show you how she dealt with it.
I’m grateful she shared this and even learned somethings about myself on her journey. Thanks for sharing this with me.
Thanks Crown Publishing via NetGalley.

3.5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

As soon as I heard about this book, I wanted to read it. The title is very intriguing and although I quickly realized what the story would be, I was interested to hear how the author’s life/story would play out.

So…. Yes, it was interesting to hear the author describe her tough childhood, and the challenges of growing up brown. There was a solid theme of not fitting in. But I admired her tenacity and rooted for her throughout.
The problem I had was that the “issue” that the title implies wasn’t mentioned until the book was two thirds done, then the remaining third raced through discoveries and consequences. I thought it was a bit misleading to have such a catchy title and then leave the reader hanging for so long. I would have been more interested in hearing about the ramifications to the author’s life at this point rather than so much information about her early years.

In this memoir, Wong tells her story of growing up mix-raced in a largely white, upper middle class, suburban community. As if that wasn’t challenging enough, she describes life with an unreliable, mostly absent father, a narcissistic, erratic mother, and a stepfather who left her feeling like an outsider .
The author writes of never feeling like she fit in with her family, and begins to understand why, when as an adult, some of her mother’s long-held secrets come to light.
This is certainly a compelling story of some serious family dysfunction. But I gotta admit - the more I read, the less I liked the author. It seemed like anytime she fell short or didn’t come out looking too great, it was someone else’s fault - her parents, jealous coworkers, other people’s prejudices, etc. But anytime she experienced some success, it was because she’s just so brilliant. Based on Wong’s depiction, her mother sounds like she was a real piece of work. But I suspect that the author might be a bit of a narcissist herself.
Thanks to #netgalley and #crownpublishinggroup for this #arc of #whydidntyoutellme in exchange for an honest review.

I know mine is not the most popular opinion, but I was not a fan of Why Didn’t You Tell Me? Let met start by commending the author for having the courage to put pen to paper and write about her experiences. That alone is worthy of my respect, and I can tell by the feel of this story that it was tough to write.

The biggest thing that struck me about this novel was the tremendous amount of tension and bitterness that leaps off the pages. It is written almost like one would write in a diary, to vent and deal with unresolved issues, and less like the paternal mystery I had assumed this novel was going to be about. I picked up and put down this book so many times that I finally resorted to skimming, and even then it was a struggle. Maybe I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be reading such a deep subject matter, and I again commend the author for sharing her truth. It just wasn’t an enjoyable read for me.

WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME is a complex and vibrant exploration of genealogy and self by author Carmen Rita Wong. It’s also a tale of parental narcissism writ large; of self-involvement so enormous that secrets are spun whole cloth for many reasons and no reasons. Wong had a mother who never missed an opportunity to re-write her past and multiple possible fathers with varying interests in her existence. Remarkably, she is a fascinating and accomplished woman whose questions about herself have led her beyond her real or purported origins. This is an interesting look at a mother’s desire to live an unknown life and her daughter’s wish to be known despite that effort. I received my copy from the publisher through NetGalley.