This week on Our Body Politic, Farai Chideya revisits some of her favorite conversations with three authors. She starts with award-winning journalist, producer and author Danyel Smith, whose book Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop offers insight into Danyel’s career in music journalism and highlights Black women’s seismic - and sometimes underrated - influence on the world of pop music and business. Farai also talks with MacArthur Grant Award winner, Harvard professor and author Tiya Miles about one family heirloom from the enslavement period that remarkably stood the test of time. Then, Farai interviews Carmen Rita Wong, writer, journalist, finance expert and author of Why Didn’t You Tell Me? A Memoir. Wong candidly shares how discovering a series of family secrets surrounding her heritage led her to re-examine her race and culture and forge a new path for authentic self-discovery.
Farai Chideya [00:00:03] Hi, folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you haven't yet, remember to follow this podcast on your podcatcher of choice, like Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. And if you have time, please leave us a review. It helps other listeners find us and we read them for your feedback. You can also reach out to us on Instagram and Twitter @OurBodyPolitic. We are here for you with you and because of you, so keep letting us know what's on your mind. We'd also love for you to join in financially supporting the show if you are able. You can find out more at OurBodyPolitic.com/donate. Thanks for listening.
This is Our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya. It's that time of year again. The sun is out, the grill is on, and summer reading is in full swing. But with so many great books out there, where do you start? In this Summer Book Club special, we're digging into the archives to bring you conversations with three incredible authors about identity, legacy and inheritance. First up is Shine Bright: A Very Personal History Of Black Women In Pop by renowned culture journalist Danyel Smith. Danyel was the first Black woman editor of Billboard. She was also editor at large at Time Inc. and editor in chief of Vibe magazine. And she hosted the podcast Black Girl Songbook. Danyel and I were also baby journalists together back in the day. In addition to being a tour de force of music commentary, Shine Bright gave me a chance to reminisce with Danyel about what covering pop culture means and how it shapes those of us who do it. Let's listen.
Farai Chideya - Hey, Danyel. Farai, you are all the things. This book is stunningly beautifully written, and thank you for it.
Danyel Smith [00:01:55] Thank you. You're welcome. I am still at a place where I think I am still somewhat in shock that the book finally exists in the world.
Farai Chideya [00:02:08] And I just want to say that your witty use of language, like you have phrases like keep it within Nutbush city limits. That was about the ways that Tina Turner is constrained by the music business and then cut off like Kunta Kinte’s foot about how the pioneering guitarist sister Rosetta Tharpe was cut out of the origin story of rock and roll. Phrases like that just give me life and and often it's about things that are traumatic in terms of these powerful women being constantly boxed in, stolen from, underrated, poorly represented, and yet still triumphing. So what made you write this book?
Danyel Smith [00:02:54] I'm inspired by the crimes that have been committed against these women with regard to their careers and their lives. I'm inspired by the music that they continue to make, by the way they continue to write songs of joy when oftentimes they were experiencing so much sadness and unfairness. So I'm inspired.
Farai Chideya [00:03:15] Let's go into some of the ways in which you present case studies. You know, these detailed, beautiful portraits of creative Black women and how they have to navigate the industry. And you start with the Dixie Cups. I had never heard of them, even though I had heard their music a million times. And I don't think that's an accident. So who are they? And tell us a little bit about them.
Danyel Smith [00:03:46] Well, The Dixie Cups are a girl group with one number, one pop hit, one top five pop hit. We all know those records. We just don't know the girls that sang them and who arranged them vocally and who co-wrote them and who were only really credited for their vocals. Those are The Dixie Cups, three girls out of the projects in New Orleans, Louisiana, and they have that great song. SINGS: Going to the chapel and we're gonna get married, right?
Farai Chideya [00:04:22] Yep.
Danyel Smith [00:04:23] So I wrote about the Dixie Cups because when I was a little girl in the car with my mother listening to the radio, that song was on the oldies station that my mother listened and my mother's sister enjoyed. And I began to think that one of the reasons why it appealed to my mother and her sister and to myself and my sister is because maybe those girls are from lower middle class New Orleans, as my family was before they migrated to Oakland in the early 1920s. So I wanted to really talk to them. Rosa Lee Hawkins and Barbara Anne Hawkins and I was able to specifically for this book. Rosa Lee died just a few months ago before Shine Bright came out, and it's heartbreaking to me, but talking to them was an education and a joy.
Farai Chideya [00:05:12] Yeah. And they were put in a position where you make a very clear argument that they should have gotten more credit for the songwriting and arranging than they did.
Danyel Smith [00:05:23] Yes, absolutely. I mean, we talk about like the credits, like people get paid for very specific things in recorded music and, you know, you get paid for songwriting, you get paid for vocally arranging, you get paid for producing. All these things are separate and big checks, especially if it's a big record. So if you did vocal arranging, if you did some co-production, if you did some songwriting, but all you're getting paid for is vocals you are being stolen from, and the Dixie Cups were stolen from… massively.
Farai Chideya [00:05:56] In that section you have a couple of different things in there that were these gems that stood out to me. You talk about the politics of caste and how they they operate and that those politics blocked the ungendered interracial synergy that could have been the promise of music. And also that credits are claims to gold mines that stuck out. But it's just you know all of that together like the promise that was missed when Black people and Black women were marginalized and the stolen wealth. You know?
Danyel Smith [00:06:30] Yes, I mean, the Dixie's, you know, knocked the Beatles off the number one spot with Going To The Chapel. And it's just rarely spoken about. And it's something they're hyper aware of. They're also very hyper aware of that. You know, they weren't on Motown and so they didn't receive a lot of the credit, even that the Supremes, who still don't receive the credit that they're due. But the Dixies did never receive the credit, even that the Supremes received just because the Supremes were a part of a bigger community, much more plugged in and have the weight of Berry Gordy and company behind them.
Farai Chideya [00:07:06] I wanted to actually focus a lot of what we're going to talk about regarding artists on one family, the Drinkard family. I had never heard of them either, but I had because they are Leontyne Price, Dionne Warwick, Whitney Houston, among others, this musical family. Tell me a little bit about, you know, this family and their roots.
Danyel Smith [00:07:32] Well, it really is bizarre to me that we don't talk about that Drinkard family as a dynasty, that we don't talk about theDrinkard bloodline as a as a musical phenomenon over the course of the last 100 years, because it starts with Leontyne Price in Mississippi, who is one of the most famous opera divas in the history of American opera, Definitely. And has so many firsts attached to her name in opera and music that it's difficult to even quantify. Her cousin is Dionne Warwick. Dionne Warwick with her many, many hits. Many, many hits. My goodness. And her effect on pop culture all the way from the from Do You Know The Way To San Jose? All the way to That's What Friends Are For And beyond all the the the songwriting and vocal arranging there. Dionne Warwick doesn't get credit for could fill an entire warehouse or three. And then you speak about Dionne Warwick. Blood relationship to Cissy Houston, who is the mother of Whitney Houston. Cissy Houston appears as background and foreground singer on records from everybody from Elvis Presley to Paul Simon's and Van Morrison to Aretha Franklin. It goes on and on and on into forever. And then she also was responsible for training the voice of the 20th century: Whitney Houston. That alone would put her in any hall of fame.
Farai Chideya [00:09:02] Let's move on to Dionne Warwick. How did you write about her in this book?
Danyel Smith [00:09:08] I wanted to write about Dionne Warwick as the genius that she is. I think you know, we all are into reclaiming Ms. Warwick now because of her incredible presence on Twitter, on social media. She has pithy remarks. She's obviously super funny and super brilliant. And I think many of us are acting as if that is new. Dionne has always been that way. Dionne has always been like forging a path. She has always been in hugely successful multicultural, creative relationships. Hugely successful multicultural creative teams. She laid the ground for Whitney Houston's career.
Farai Chideya [00:09:57] And as you were writing this book, you went very deep, not only into the lives and the financial and creative struggles and triumphs of so many different people. You also went into witnessing Whitney Houston on her journey at times, good and bad. Another member of this same musical family…Just a tragedy, you know. But give me a sense of like, what your arc was with listening to Whitney Houston as just a listener and then getting to cover her struggle.
Danyel Smith [00:10:38] I'm still sad, still mourning Whitney's death. I when I see Dionne Warwick, even now in all of her status as being an elder in our community. And then I think about what we could have witnessed if Whitney had lived. The time with Whitney that I was able to spend with her as a reporter, as a as a as a feature writer, as as an editor in chief, you know, negotiating a cover for Vibe magazine, running into her at various music industry, community events, it makes it all the more precious for me. And I wanted to write something about her that allowed people to maybe see her more clearly, to see her more fully in her humanity. It matters to me. It matters to me that Whitney, for all the credit she has received. People say to me, How can you say that Black women don't receive credit? I say, they do receive credit. We do receive credit. We just don't receive the credit we are due. And there is a difference.
Farai Chideya [00:11:44] Yeah. Let's start with Vibe. There is a point in the book where you talk about someone threatening your life. I mean, that's not trivial in a business, in the music industry where people do get shot over both business and, you know, perceptions of beef. Can you just tell us a little bit about the circumstances and how you handled it?
Danyel Smith [00:12:13] I was functioning off instinct. I was functioning off... There are some wonderful ways in which I was raised as a little girl, but there are also some terrible ones. I was functioning off both of those experiences. You know, our space in the world is so huge culturally as Black people that because it gets narrowed down to such small spaces, like at the end of the day by Ebony, Essence, those spaces at the Black magazines become very hotly contested territories. They mean more, frankly, even than they ought to. And I was head of one of them when rap and R&B had just moved again after the 80s to the top of the charts. And everybody wanted a Vibe cover. And that literally was my job to take advice from my amazing staff, whoever was on it at the time. So, yes, I got the cal...
Farai Chideya [00:13:16] From a music industry executive. Yes. Someone who had institutional power. Who threatened your life.
Danyel Smith [00:13:22] Yes. And who we all know and love currently. And who I speak to.
Farai Chideya [00:13:29] Mm hmm. Yeah. You talk about having a million photographs with this person and just not backing down.
Danyel Smith [00:13:36] No.
Farai Chideya [00:13:36] And not taking this lightly, but also not rolling over.
Danyel Smith [00:13:40] No, I wasn't going to roll over in hip hop at that time, rolling over was just asking for the rest of your professional days and to be miserable and you'd never get anything done. And I hate even the sound of my voice right now, because it's so easy, honestly, for me to fall back into that mode of, listen, Vibe is my responsibility and I am my responsibility. And it seems to me that you are trying to harm both. So listen to me. If you want me to fight, sir, that is available to you.
Farai Chideya [00:14:15] Mm hmm.
Danyel Smith [00:14:15] I don't act that way anymore, but I definitely did. And I had to. And I think what's wild about it is people respected me for that. Like, I really have to act this way in order for men in particular, and sometimes women to take me seriously in my position in this job. It's wild how on a day to day you don't feel the weight of it. You don't feel the amount of energy that you're putting into the fight. But if you really do look at my career, I've never stayed in an editorial job at the top of the masthead for longer than maybe just over two years, because I wake up and say, I'm tired and it's time for me to write or it's time for me to go back to school. Yeah, time for me to travel or just rest.
Farai Chideya [00:15:13] You did so much as editor of Vibe, and I, of course, used to write for Vibe with gratitude you know, before you became editor in chief. And it was a huge part of my development as a writer who had been trained in, you know, majority white newsrooms where Black people were a “they”. And then to be able to write for Vibe were Black people were a “we”.
Danyel Smith [00:15:39] That's a beautiful way to put it, Farai. A beautiful way to put it. Vibe is and was a correction of the record. Professor Eric Weisberg wrote a book and he's quoted in Shine Bright as saying, America's Top 40 is not America's top 40, if it ever was. Hmm. And to be honest with you, the reason why Vibe was so successful is because we were covering the music that was actually the most popular in this country and in the world. And other people were covering what they wished was the most popular music in this country and in the world. And that is a reason why their numbers were sagging as ours were growing. It felt so wonderful to be a part of the magazine that was dealing in truth. See, everyone thinks, oh, it's a Black magazine. Yes, it was. It's a multicultural magazine. Absolutely. With a Black and multicultural staff, without question. We were in service to see the truth, which was hip hop rules. Biggie and Tupac and Toni Braxton and Busta Rhymes and Lauryn Hill and Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. Beyoncé, Destiny's Child. Jay-Z should have been on the covers of mainstream magazines throughout the nineties and the 2000. It's only in the 2000 and tens that you really begin to see it. And it's still not reflective of the impact that R&B or rap has on the global pop culture. I came up almost as an advocacy general with hip hop was very much in need of defending in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the world at large was calling it a fad and saying that it would never last. And it wasn't art and it wasn't real music. That doesn't mean that the art form isn't problematic and doesn't need to be interrogated as much as it is celebrated.
Farai Chideya [00:17:27] I'm going to wrap up here by asking you a little bit about your journey to self define throughout this book. You are really also giving us a history, I think, of how you became a woman, you know, and reading some of the passages about. The cruelty of your stepfather and the ways in which you had to self define and find all sorts of spaces, whether it was summer camp or, you know, school musicals or just riding your bike to be free. As a child, did you think you could be free given all you were facing?
Danyel Smith [00:18:14] I think as a child, I had a brief time once I realized that I was in the situation that I was in and that I might be in it for a while. The Cruel situation. I had a brief period of thinking that I could. Never be free. Mm hmm. But I had honestly. Back up. My sister Raquel, my best friend in the world. But I also had the love of my great grandparents. So I write about a lot in this book. My great grandparents overlapped us and they trusted us to do the right things. They trusted that we could sit. As I write about in Shine Bright and just listen with my blind great grandfather to a whole A's game.
Farai Chideya [00:19:01] Yep.
Danyel Smith [00:19:01] Which gave me my first taste of being like a citizen of a city that I am from Oakland. And we have a baseball team and we are really a good and strong community here. These are the kind of things they gave me when I was going through some terrible times. The ability to say, I'm going to figure this out. Mm hmm. I'm going to get some kind of life that matters to me and I'm going to do it if I have to on my own.
Farai Chideya [00:19:29] So what gives you the joy and the strength to keep being vulnerable and keep expressing your freedom as you evolve?
Danyel Smith [00:19:38] I believe in my own writing as a space for me to really just be known and understood. And I think that that's what so many Black women in music are doing. They sing out and they song write and they dance and they choreograph and they do all these things to be known and understood, because so often that's just taken from us. And so I keep right on going. Farai And also because it's fun, you know. I literally enjoy it.
Farai Chideya [00:20:04] That was music journalist Danyel Smith on her book Shine Bright: A Very Personal History Of Black Women In Pop.
Farai Chideya - My next guest is a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient and Harvard historian Tiya Miles. Her book, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake tells the story of a century and a half old embroidered cotton sack. But really, it tells a love story, the story of a love of a parent and how it nourishes a child and future generations during the most brutal of circumstances. For some Americans, passing down family heirlooms is standard practice. But for those with ancestors who were enslaved, the picture is different. I sat down with Tiya to talk about her book and the valiant struggle of enslaved people to preserve dignity, love and family heritage.
Farai Chideya - So this book is magnificent. I have been spending time listening to the audiobook version with my mother, and it just, you know, we both talked about the intensity of the experience. Like at points I've cried about the narratives in your book. And it really stuck with me. It's so deep and so powerful and so critical to talk about the history that is not told. So describe Ashley’s Sack and what it looks like now in a bit of its journey.
Tiya Miles [00:21:35] Well, Farai, I cried many a time to working on this project. Doing the research, writing the drafts. When I read from the book, I oftentimes can't help but cry because it is such a sad history, such a mournful history. But Ashley’s Sack, an artifact that has been preserved from the period of enslavement, really helps us to see both the pain and the perseverance. And that is why I love this object so much and why I think it has so much to teach us. Ashley’s Sack is the name that was given by museum curators to an old cotton bag from the 1850s; an agricultural sack used for carrying seeds or for carrying cotton. It ended up in the hands of an enslaved Black woman named Rose, who was living in Charleston with her enslavers. And Rose took this sack, this plain, ordinary utilitarian bag, and she packed it with critical items that she thought would help to preserve her daughter's life because her daughter, Ashley, was about to be sold away from her. The inscription that was embroidered on the sack by the descendant of Rose and Ashley sewed these words: My great grandmother, Rose, mother of Ashley, gave her the sack when she was sold at age nine in South Carolina. It held a tattered dress, three handfuls of pecans, a Braid of Roses’ hair. Told her it'd be filled with my love, always. She never saw her again. Ashley, is my grandmother, Ruth Middleton, 1921.
Farai Chideya - Yeah. You you really capture the vulnerability throughout this book of Black women, Black mothers and Black children. And yet this is a story with so much hope in it. And I and I want you to start out with a little bit of the Prolog. Can you read to us?
Tiya Miles - Just as Rose and Ashley found on their forest journeys through slavery's landscape, there is no safe place of escape left for us. The walls of the world are closing in. We need to get out of here in a hurry. We need to get out of this frame of mind and states of emotion that elevate mastery over compassion, division, over connection and greed over care. Separating us one from another and locking us in. Our only options in this predicament. The state of political and planetary emergency. And to act as first responders or die, not trying. We are the ancestors of our descendants. They are the generations we've made with a radical hope for their survival. What will we pack into their sacks?
Farai Chideya - And so when you think about this book, to me, this book is an embodiment of exactly what Ashley's Sack represented, which is something to carry forward. And I loved how in your book you talk about… in the act of imagining that her daughter could have a little bit of food to survive and a lack of her hair and these other things that she packed into what she was imagining. Her daughter had a future and she did. And you are part of that, you know, what's your relation to this story? You know, we haven't talked explicitly about that yet.
Tiya Miles - I think we're all part of that. Right. And that that is how I tried to tell the story and how I tried to write the book to open the sack up wide to make room for us all. Because this is a story for Black America, a story for Black women, but also a story for the whole country, because slavery is the history of our country. I came to know the fact because a journalist down in Georgia told me about it and insisted that I had to see it. And when I finally did see it in the Smithsonian, I just could not walk away.
Farai Chideya - Yeah. And you have a whole section on hair in the book. And so what does the braid represent to you? And what did hair represent in the context of enslavement? What did it mean for Ashley to receive a lock of her mother's hair?
Tiya Miles - Hair can be viewed as a trivial thing. Yeah, we know. When looking at the history of Black women, it was not trivial in the least. It was centrally important to Black women's maintenance of their own dignity. And yet they had to, you know, fight tooth and nail to try to protect that dignity. And hair is just one way they did it. And so we're dealing with that few items. We know that each item is important. That braid must have meant everything to Rose. It would have meant everything to Ashley. Hair means everything to us because it's a symbol of ourselves, our belief in ourselves, what we see in the record of slavery, Black women taking their Sundays off to do their hair up, to flat their hair to twine and their hair maybe to untwine the hair. If they had had it twined during the week to find pieces of fabric that they thought were beautiful or bright, and to put that fabric around their hair, to braid their hair and do that for one another. This was an act of love. This was an act of self preservation.
Farai Chideya - Yeah. I think that among all the other gifts that you give us is this gift very painful at times of feeling something for Ashley. How do you think people navigated their own ownership of themselves when they literally did not own themselves?
Tiya Miles - Well, I mean, that's that's the question. That's what we need to know, right? Because we want to respect them by doing our best to understand their experiences. And we want to be able to gather what we can from their experiences to ensure the future survival of our children, our descendants, even ourselves. So, yes, we want to know how they did it. One of the things that I worked hardest on in this book was trying to see if I could come closer to approaching what it was like to be the mother of an enslaved child. Mm hmm. A person having to live with the fact that they did not have the ability. The freedom, the right to determine their own life choices, to protect their children, to choose who with who they would love to maintain and hold on to the fruits of their labor. They didn't have that. I cannot imagine how helpless and helpless I would feel if I were in that situation. But we know that even being in that situation, our ancestors, many of them, not all, because, you know, we lost we lost many to this torture and brutality, but our ancestors managed to push through. They managed to make a way. They managed to form families and to love one another and to braid each other's hair and to find joy and to make art. And I think they did it because of these bonds of love. At least that's what the artifact of Ashley Sack tells me. That's what I drew from this research and from this project. That eventually, is that through love, they made a way.
Farai Chideya - That was Tiya Miles talking about her latest book, All That She Carried The Journey Of Ashley Sach, A Black Family Keepsake.
BREAK
Farai Chideya [00:30:25] Welcome back to Our Body Politic. I'm Farai Chideya. In this summer special, we're revisiting conversations with our favorite authors about the stories that shape who we are, where we come from, and what we're passing on. In her book, Why Didn't You Tell Me: A Memoir, Carmen Rita Wong shares her deeply personal journey after discovering that her family and even her race are not what she's been told her whole life. Before she wrote her book, Carmen was co-creator and television host of CNBC's On The Money and a national advice columnist. She joined us to talk about her story and how race and culture in America shape our identities. Let's listen.
Farai Chideya - So, you know, this book is amazing. I come from a line of writers. My grandmother was a writer. My mother was a writer. And my grandmother had an unfinished memoir because she said, I can't, you know, finish this book until Emma is dead. And Emma was her mother. But even once her mother died, she never published a memoir. And she had a complicated relationship with her own mother. You go there, you know, you go through the good, the bad, the ugly, the funny, all of it. What gave you the strength to say, I'm just going to talk about things as they are?
Carmen Rita Wong [00:31:42] Oh, my goodness. Let's just say it took years and years of fortifying myself first. I've been thinking about and wanting to write a memoir for decades, but I finally did it. Partially because it just, I felt this clock ticking, which the ticking got, of course, faster when my brother became sick. You know, folks don't live too long in my family. And I really felt also that things in the outside world, the country we live in, were shifting quite a bit. I just said this is the time. I do think there's a really big gift, though, by the way, in hitting a certain milestone, as in the 5 0.
Farai Chideya [00:32:22] Both of us have been there.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:32:23] All right. Now or never. And what are you going to do? Let's do it.
Farai Chideya [00:32:28] Yeah. Let's get to a key revelation. There's many revelations, but this one is one that's critical. The man you thought that your father was not actually your father, and you found that out at 31. Take us there.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:32:45] Mm hmm. And that's not even the biggest one…biggest surprise, by the way. There's even more after that. I thought that.
Farai Chideya [00:32:53] This book is full of many surprises.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:32:55] Let me tell you, I thought that that was it at 31. I really did. My mother was sick with cancer. I hadn't been speaking to her for a couple of years. We had a very, very difficult relationship. She was a very damaged woman. I don't want to give too much away but she was sick. She had cancer. And my stepfather and her had divorced. And he was dating someone. And I guess he told this lady the secret. And this lady said, isn't she dying? Like, you can't let this, her take this to the grave. So my stepfather was the one who ended up telling me that I wasn't Poppy Wong's kid.
Farai Chideya [00:33:42] Wow.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:33:44] That was devastating because I never you know, he said he was my father. Now, unfortunately, you know, there was another surprise that happened ten years later. I never felt a part of that family. That second family. I always felt connected to my brother. So it was really devastating to suddenly lose that connection to my brother, which I decided I didn't lose anything goddamn it. But to lose being Chinese.
Farai Chideya [00:34:13] Yes.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:34:15] That was devastating. I can't tell you how much it ripped my heart out, because when we talk about race and being a race, right, it's the outward appearance. Sure. It's how you raised. But it's part of being a part of a community.
Danyel Smith [00:34:33] Mm hmm.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:34:35] A culture, a people with a deep history. I always felt a connection to that. Poppy Wong was always in my life. He recently passed away and after my brother passed away, of course I had to take care of him. And, you know, as you're managing, you know, take care of him in his sickness as well and bury him. And it's that still today as it is my father. I may not be Chinese, but I am a Wong.
Danyel Smith [00:35:02] Mm hmm.
Farai Chideya [00:35:03] Yeah, 100%.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:35:05] And that's that. Because, you know, it's funny. I've had some people ask me like, oh, are you going to change your last name? And I'm like, that's that's a ridiculous question because it's like saying to someone who's adopted and finds their birth parents, Oh, you're going to change your name to your birthparents? Well of course not.
Farai Chideya [00:35:21] Yeah.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:35:23] This is the person who was raised as my parent. It's connected to a race of people. Sure. But what I'm connected to is the family and my history for the first 31 years of my life and being along. And that's it. I'm a Wong, I may not be biologically Chinese. But I'm a Wong.
Farai Chideya [00:35:43] Why don't you lay out your origin story for me? If you were to tell people what this book is about. What's. What is it about to you?
Carmen Rita Wong [00:35:51] Well, I'll tell you, overall, it's about truth. Mm hmm. Truth in answering the question, who am I? Having other people in your life answer the question. Who am I? Who are you? So it's that search for the truth. I wrote it a little bit like a page turner or a thriller of mystery. Because that's how my life has lived out with surprises at every corner. But I'll also say it's a story about mothers and daughters. It's a story about identity. And a lot of stories about whether it's adoption or in-vitro. When people are looking for their parents, they don't have the added element of race thrown in.
Farai Chideya [00:36:30] Yep.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:36:31] Let's just say I started out my life in Harlem, uptown Manhattan, right? With a large Dominican family of all colors. And a Chinese father. Ended up my mother's second marriage to an Anglo American in New Hampshire. And the shock?
Farai Chideya [00:36:45] One of the most diverse states in the nation. Sorry, just…
Carmen Rita Wong [00:36:48] Listen, Farai, you should. Oh, you should have seen what it was like in the late seventies, early eighties. Yeah. I mean, we were Martians, you know, moon people and not treated very well.
Farai Chideya [00:37:01] Can you just tell the story about your family driving up to the house?
Carmen Rita Wong [00:37:04] So my new stepfather decided he had to teach my mother how to drive because she was pregnant with their first child. And my brother and I, as little brown kids, were in the backseat. And it was nighttime because it was after work. And he's teaching her how to drive in our neighborhood. We are just a few doors down from our own house and we get pulled over by the police. The neighbors had called the police on us because “Puerto Ricans” are casing the neighborhood.
Danyel Smith [00:37:38] Mm hmm.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:37:40] And I learned a lot of lessons that day. I learned, you know, we were not welcome. I learned, you know, fear of the police. Then of course, as early as when I had my CNBC show and I had to drive into New Jersey, I was getting pulled over by police in the immigration sweeps. And then there was a time the school had to take the bus to a field trip in Montreal in Quebec, and immigration stopped the bus because of me.
Farai Chideya [00:38:04] Tell us a little bit about Poppy Wong and you know how you and your brother would stroll through these Chinese restaurants. And then I want to hear about your abuela and your Dominican family to give us a sense of where you were circulating as a child.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:38:18] Oh, the contrast. Boy, that prepared me for a lot in life. So, Poppy, as we call them, Poppy, would come pick us up because my parents split when I was young, but he would come pick us up every weekend a couple of times a week, actually. But usually on the weekends it was dress up time because he'd take us to the fancy Chinese restaurants. So that in Chinatown, you know, you have the restaurants with the duck and the ribs in the window. And I love that. And that was like a weekday. And then on the weekends, it was the very, you know, gold and red and expansive Chinatown restaurants with the dias and on the dias would be his, quote unquote, buddies. Poppy operated on the other side of the law. So these were gangsters, which he was as well. And his bosses, the Dons. Right. So he would bring his two little brown children who did not look Chinese at all and parade us through. We were all dressed up. My abuela would dress us up in like our finest. I had go go boots. I had a little fur remnant coat from her seamstress job with Oscar de la Renta. She'd take remnants and sell these little calico coats for me, and he would just bring us through. And he was loud. He made friends with everyone you know. And he'd talk to everybody and bring us up there very proudly. And that was very formative. If you think about, like, what that communicates to a child.
Danyel Smith [00:39:43] Yeah.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:39:45] My grandmother dressing us up in our best and taking the time and attention to make things for me. Poppy, though his love was quite interesting and difficult, he was not necessarily a nice person, but him presenting us in such a way. It was very formative. It really gave me a sense of deserving space, right? Yeah. And then at home it was the Dominican life. We have our cousins who are also Dominican, Chinese across the street. I mean, I'm telling you, we had a whole family of dozens within a four block radius. And abuela, my well, my grandfather co-owned the cleaners and tailors on the corner, 125th and Broadway, which is now a Starbucks people! But he on that for a long time. And you know it was just a loud, high energy, you know, delicious food, lots of love. But the one place that was a vacuum was my mother.
Danyel Smith [00:40:47] Mm hmm.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:40:49] That was kind of a Black hole that was missing a lot. It was… It's funny, I mentioned the book that I don't remember her voice very much. I remember her being there, but I don't remember her saying anything. She was a bit detached, and I forgive her for that because she was married off for immigration reasons at the age of 19 to this Chinese gangster.
Farai Chideya [00:41:14] And let's talk about proximity to whiteness. Like I got verba butt whoopin on clubhouse one day when I was talking about African and Black American relations and and people just really came at me about… they said, well, you have the proximity to whiteness where you can earn money, basically talking about Black American anti African sentiment, which is true.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:41:41] Mm hmm.
Farai Chideya [00:41:42] Among some people and I'm half African, half Black American. And so that concept influenced how you even came to exist because your father's proximity to whiteness as a Chinese man was factored into how your mother was steered to marry him. Can you explain a little bit more about that?
Carmen Rita Wong [00:42:02] Yes. Yes. I mean, listen, the layers and layers of racism and class, of course, in the Caribbean, you know, when you have such a strong African-American indigenous population, then you have travelers and immigrants like the Chinese, or you end up with this kind of system of who's at the top? Well, who's at the top? White folks, of course, right then Asian. So in my family, Dominicans feel like it felt like in my my grandfather felt like Chinese was the next thing closest to being white. Because, you know, Asians who he knew in the Dominican Republic. Oh, they had the stereotype of they worked hard. They believed in education, you know, like they shared some of the things that their idea of white Americans have. Now, here's the funny thing. You mentioned proximity to whiteness. There was that. And that's the reason why he married off his daughters to Chinese, even though they were gangsters. But then my mother marries an Anglo American and talk about proximity to whiteness. That's the reason why I learned how to manage my money at 12 years old and had a savings account at 12 and, you know, read the Wall Street Journal with him. And, you know, that's the reason why I had such a career in that space and understood these things. Even, you know, when I was an editor at Money magazine and this was in late 90s, 2000s I said, you know, why are we not in this space, brown and Black people? Like, why should, you know, white folks be the only people with access to this knowledge? It felt like some kind of a club. So I decided to use my proximity to whiteness to move forward in a field that we did not exist in. But I don't know if I would have had that ability and gumption and entitlement if I hadn't lived in that atmosphere.
Farai Chideya [00:43:52] And you do talk in this book about what it's like to have to go through these changes of self-identification and still hold the center of who Carmen Rita Wong is. And so who's Carmen Rita Wong now?
Carmen Rita Wong [00:44:09] Oh, Farai. Well, you know, I am a constantly morphing thing, and if only because not just the outside world and its influence and my family's secrets, which keep changing as to who I actually come from, but because I'm constantly working on myself.
Farai Chideya [00:44:27] Mm hmm.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:44:27] And so what I'll say now is I've endured also a lot of tragedy the past couple of years losing my brother, losing my father, my my daughter, his long COVID. I had an accident earlier this year, severe accident. So I am definitely at a space where I am more fully and truly myself than I've ever been. It means making my circles smaller. It means focusing and carrying on things that are very important, really important, and knowing what that is like. To me, it means that I am still in my mind, you know, very much ChinaLatina, but much more Latina. I've always been much more Latina because of my mother and being a great support to my nieces and a great mom.
Farai Chideya [00:45:12] Where are you at as a creator?
Carmen Rita Wong [00:45:14] I am what I've always wanted to be since I was a kid. A writer? My mother raised me with that whole kind of immigrant, you know, doctor, lawyer or MBA. That's it. You have no. You can't be a writer. You can't be an actor, a performer. You can't do these things because I didn't work so hard. So you could do that stuff. Right. So I lived the life she wanted me to live. I lived a life I thought I had to live. And now, finally, when I decided, that's it, I'm doing this book. I'm selling this book the way I want to write it, which was a struggle. It ended up in the best place, and it just solidified that I'm on the right track of just being myself. And Farai, to have this, you know, done with Crown, to have The New York Times review it so well, it just it's amazing. The validation is incredible. At 51 years old, who knew?
Farai Chideya [00:46:09] New, 51 years young. Hello.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:46:13] You know, like I said. People pass young In my family, every year is a gift, every bit of it.
Farai Chideya [00:46:19] To live in truth is brave and beautiful. And you have done that. And it seems like you're good with your choices, you know, to not turn away from who you are and who your family is and to love expansively across your family, including all the people who have different deficits, as we all do.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:46:39] Mm hmm. Thank you. Thank you, my friend. Yes. I got to tell you, living in truth is freedom. It's absolute freedom. Secrets and lies serve the person who is doing the lying. And it doesn't serve yourself to lie to yourself, either. So, you know, get to know yourself who you really are. That inner voice that you've always had and living in that has just been a tremendous freedom. And I continue to try to to listen to that.
Farai Chideya [00:47:07] You know, it's been such a pleasure talking to you. And definitely your book is just full of life wisdom on so many different levels about how to be a human, how to be a woman, how to be a child, how to be a parent. Thank you so much, Carmen Rita Wong.
Carmen Rita Wong [00:47:25] Thank you, Farai.
Farai Chideya [00:47:27] That was author Carmen Rita Wong talking to us about her memoir Why Didn't You Tell Me?
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We are on the air each week and everywhere you
listen to podcasts. You can find us on Instagram and Twitter @OurBodyPolitic. Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms and Rococo Punch.
I'm host and executive producer Farai Chideya. Nina Spensley and Shanta Covington are executive producers. Emily J. Daly is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister is our booking producer. Monica Morales-Garcia is our producer and fact checker. Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers. This episode was produced by Kate Dellis with help from Steve Lack, Bianca Martin, and Tracy Caldwell. It was engineered by Mike Garth and Archie Moore.
This program is produced with support from the Luce Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, The Harnisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the BMe Community, Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, The Pop Culture collaborative, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.