Carmen Rita Wong
speaker
98 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Carmen Rita Wong’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
So to all of a sudden be told that we looked bad, therefore were bad, bad enough to call the police on our own street. That message stuck with me forever.
When I started grade school there, my brother and I were just in for the shock of our lives. We were the only brown, brown, black nation people around there.
My mother was constantly drilling into my head. Education was the way to make it in this country. She was a very smart woman who had to leave her country and leave school at the age of 15. So she channeled all of her ambition into me. And I wanted my mother's love, so I had to get those A's because she loved me when I got A's. I just became the model student.
Carmen's so smart and she's doing so great. It's because she's Chinese. It's the Chinese in her. I was proud for a split second because I was a Wong. So I'm, you know, I was proud of being a Wong for a split second. But then I looked at my mother's face and I realized she was not the Wong.
In the car ride home, I wanted to assess my mother because I felt like she might have been hurt by that comment. And so I said, you know, mommy, Sister Rita said I was smart because I was Chinese. And my mother just did a Mona Lisa smile. And that was it. But I knew she was not only okay, but she somehow had something one up on this nun.
By the time I was 11 years old, there were four children under the age of six in the house. My sisters, they had a different last name and having a white father, they were treated differently. So I felt like an orbiting moon, right? like I didn't belong. I begged my stepfather to adopt me, for me to change my name. I so wanted to be part of this new family, but they kept telling me no.
She explained to me from very young age that anything that was mine and my brother's, whether it was tuition, clothing, expenses, anything was paid for by Papi. And that my stepfather, besides the roof over our head and the food at the dinner table, was not contributing to my brother and I at all.
I went from seeing him a lot to barely seeing him, only a few times a year. So I was looking for her dad.
It was another plea to just be a part of this family. And I had four little sisters who called him dad.
My way of getting close to Marty was involving myself in whatever he was doing. whether it was changing a tire or fixing the car or chopping wood or grilling a burger or reading the Wall Street Journal. I became this surrogate boy of his.
My brother left for college, which broke my heart. I missed him so much.
And in the summers... He would go work with Poppy to earn basically extra money for college.
And then one night, my mother comes to my room. I'm studying. And she does that thing when the parents want to talk to you about something serious. They sit next to you in the bed. I'm like, what's up, Mom? And she says, Poppy and your brother have been arrested.
was heroin.
I'm in shock. I can't even fathom what's happening. My brother was the most straight and narrow, straight A, never got in trouble, was not like a party or drink or nothing, full-on nerd. I was stunned. I was stunned.
And my mother told me, thank God. Gracias a Dios, as she would say. My brother lost it so badly. He's crying and begging, absolutely having a mental breakdown. The cops were like, there is no way that you knew what was going on.
My mother, because she was so strident about making it in this country, doing something that would get you arrested, you know, you're dead to me. He was undeserving of mention. But my mother said, here's the big news for you. There's no more money. There's nobody paying for your college because Marty is not going to contribute.
And he was not able to find work for years. So all of a sudden, my mother and my four sisters were living off of his savings.
My mother, her basic mantra was, you're old enough. go work.
And I was just all full steam ahead. I had to succeed.
Showing 21–40 of 98 · page 2 of 5
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