4.8 • 618 Ratings
🗓️ 19 May 2025
⏱️ 20 minutes
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0:00.0 | We continue with our special playlist to celebrate the incredible women who've been on this show. |
0:05.3 | Enjoy. |
0:12.5 | If the question of who we are must be answered in part by the people we come from, |
0:18.2 | what do we do when those people are not reliable narrators? That question is at the |
0:23.1 | heart of Carmen Rita Wong's new memoir, why didn't you tell me? It is a quest for answers about who |
0:29.0 | she is, where and who she comes from, and the mystery of her mother's secrets. |
0:46.7 | Carmen, my love you did it. |
0:47.5 | Congratulations. |
0:49.0 | Oh, my gosh. |
0:50.8 | Thank you so much. |
0:58.0 | Carmen, tell me about the man who growing up you understood to be your biological father. |
1:05.5 | You're talking about Poppy Wong. He was a Chinese merchant marine who stepped off a Norwegian shipping vessel in the early 50s in Manhattan on a pier with the shirt on his back and just went into Chinatown and started a new life. |
1:17.4 | So I knew him as this guy who kind of came in and out of my childhood, my early childhood life, but he was always a presence. |
1:27.4 | He liked to, you know, |
1:29.3 | peel off dollar bills. One of the ways he showed his love was doing that and taking my brother |
1:37.1 | and I out to Chinatown. And he was a big influence on my life. He definitely caught me some |
1:42.6 | hustle. In what ways growing up did you experience yourself or your identity as being Dominican Chinese? |
1:50.9 | It's such an interesting question because it was so natural that it's almost like I need to think about it. |
1:57.2 | And I'll tell you why. |
1:57.9 | People say Dominican Chinese, that's crazy. |
2:00.4 | Like how could that be natural? Well, uptown Manhattan, you know, we were an extended Dominican |
2:06.5 | family immigrant who settled within kind of like a couple of blocks, right? So my Tia's and my cousins |
... |
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