A review by podlley
Why Didn't You Tell Me? by Carmen Rita Wong

2.0

While I think Carmen Rita Wong's life, and notably her discussions on identity and the struggles of growing up Black, Chinese, and Latina in predominantly white dominated spaces were critical, the book reads more as a sequence of events and lacks a narrative flow. At some points, it reads more as a "here's everything that went wrong" list rather than a memoir. While, of course, she doesn't owe it to any reader to embellish her story or render her hardships more palatable, I think more could have been done to create a more pleasant reading experience. Surprisingly, for a memoir, I think there was also a lack of introspection and commentary at times. The story was particularly focused on events and things people did that made Wong's life more difficult than it should have been but other than some speculation about the causes behind people's actions, I found that there was rarely more depth to it.
TLDR: Her story was certainly worth telling, I'm not a fan of the way it was told.