will, why didn't you tell me i would have put my book down

As soon as Lupe became pregnant with the first of four daughters, Marty moved the family to New Hampshire, a bastion of Whiteness. 'Marty was a white self-proclaimed 'honky' academic type with glasses,” writes Wong, “a head of Italian curls and a bushy mustache, driving a tiny AMC Gremlin hatchback.” The author’s masterful ability to bring characters to life is a key component of the lively narrative. Lupe and Papi separated when the author was young, and she and her adored older brother were moved from the lap of the Dominican community to the apartment of the man who would become her mother's second husband. She begins with a hard fact: Peter Wong, the man she calls Papi to this day, was paid to marry her mother, Lupe, so Lupe's family could get green cards.

'I wish I could tell you a loving story,” writes Wong near the beginning, “a cross-cultural heart-filled fest of American melting-pot dreams, of how a teenage Dominican immigrant girl ended up married to a thirty-something Chinese immigrant man, but no.' In 12 chapters named for answers to the titular question-'.Because We Lost Our Way,' '.Because I Thought We Had Time,' etc.-the author traces the often maddening story of her quest for truth in a warmly immediate narrative voice.

The gradual unraveling of lifelong deceptions about her parenthood teaches a Dominican Chinese woman unsettling lessons about the mutability of identity.

Will, why didn't you tell me i would have put my book down