Contact discussion facilitator Cesar Orteg a at 630-264-3612 or email cortega@aurorapubliclibrary.org for a copy of t he book\, list of current chosen titles\, and/or for more information.
\n\nWhy Didn't You Tell Me: A Memoir by Carmen Vita Wong:
\nAn immi grant mother&rsquo\;s long-held secrets upend her daughter&rsquo\;s unders tanding of her family\, her identity\, and her place in the world in this powerful and dramatic memoir
\nMy 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.
\nCarmen Rita Wong has always craved a sense of belonging: First as a toddler in a warm room ful l of Black and brown Latina women\, like her mother\, Lupe\, cheering her dancing during her childhood in Harlem. And in Chinatown\, where her immig rant father\, &ldquo\;Papi&rdquo\; Wong\, a hustler\, would show her and h er older brother off in opulent restaurants decorated in red and gold. The n 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.
\nAs Carmen entered this new world wit h her new family&mdash\;Lupe and Marty quickly had four more children&mdas h\;her relationship with her mother became fraught with tension\, suspicio n\, and conflict\, explained only years later by the secrets her mother ha d kept for so long.
\nAnd when those secrets were revealed\ , bringing clarity to so much of Carmen&rsquo\;s life\, it was too late fo r answers. When her mother passed away\, Carmen wanted to shake her soul b y its shoulders and demand: Why didn&rsquo\;t you tell me?
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