Carmen Rita Wong, WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL ME?: A Memoir
[0:02]Hi, I'm Zippy Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books.
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[1:03]Carmen Rita Wong is the author of Why Didn't You Tell Me?
[1:06]A memoir.
[1:07]She has a 20 plus year career in media and many years of nonprofit work.
[1:12]Carmen was vice chair of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and nominating chair
[1:16]of the moth.
[1:17]She co-created and hosted her own TV news show was on air and on staff at three TV networks
[1:22]and was a magazine editor then advice columnist for four national magazines.
[1:27]Now she heads up her own production company with a focus on women led content.
[1:30]And she created and hosted a podcast featuring some incredible women.
[1:34]She has written two novels in a series and two advice books featuring some incredible
[1:38]women.
[1:39]I love your beautiful book stuff back there.
[1:41]That's awesome.
[1:42]And yours too.
[1:43]And yours.
[1:44]Thank you.
[1:45]So much neater than mine.
[1:46]Oh, please.
[1:47]No, you should see.
[1:48]You should see what's going on right over there.
[1:50]And I was literally like in tears this morning.
[1:52]I was like, there's so many bugs.
[1:54]So I guess I just stacked them all up in the window and I'm like, I can't even.
[1:58]I don't know.
[1:59]This is me.
[2:00]I have to like book sort every once in a while because it's just like, I mean piles.
[2:04]Like, I know it's so bad, but you like, this is your life.
[2:07]So I mean, I know, I know, but this is what you do.
[2:10]So you must just get bombarded.
[2:13]I do.
[2:14]Mostly with books I want to be bombarded by, yeah, the sheer volume, I'm like, I can't get
[2:19]every book that it looks like remotely good anymore.
[2:21]And this is like not even, I know, anyway, whatever, but anyway, this is a by the way,
[2:26]this is a whole, you know this.
[2:27]This is a whole Japanese, there's a word for this.
[2:30]It's like, it's very normal to collect to be surrounded by books that you're not, that
[2:35]you can't read.
[2:36]You don't have time to read.
[2:37]There's no way you can read them.
[2:38]But they want and the whole idea of collecting books and surrounding yourself with them.
[2:44]It's like a whole practice.
[2:45]So this has made me feel better when I found out about this.
[2:47]I was like, okay, because I haven't read half of them, but I want them.
[2:51]I want to be surrounded by them.
[2:54]No.
[2:55]Tell me why this is okay, this like compulsion to collect books and why, how is it good
[3:00]to tell me?
[3:01]Well, I listen for me, I know that it's always been since I was that little kid who
[3:05]like the library was my church, like my escape from everything.
[3:09]Like that comfort of being surrounded and my daughter unfortunately the same way, like wherever
[3:14]we go, we trust.
[3:15]She has to take, she may read one, but just take a whole pile of books with her.
[3:19]It's like, she calls it her comfort bag and it's like, and I, you know, kind of the same,
[3:25]in Japanese culture, it is considered just another form of kind of art collecting because
[3:31]these are pieces of people.
[3:33]It's so true.
[3:34]Art to me.
[3:35]This is like, these are people and souls and work and all these things.
[3:40]So I just love being surrounded by them.
[3:43]I, that that could have come out of my mouth, but I'm glad I came out of this.
[3:48]We share something we share, I know at some point I was like really getting all meta
[3:53]about all the books and I'm like, when I close my door, you know, just like toy story
[3:57]had like every, all the toys come alive, you know, like that all those characters are just
[4:01]like, dance around and meet each other and I'm like, what if, you don't know, like, what
[4:04]if life is weird and just like touching the books and start looking at just, yeah, and popping
[4:09]in.
[4:10]I like to just like pull one out and just pop in on like, really cool pages, put it back.
[4:13]Yeah.
[4:14]I find it very calming.
[4:15]Yes.
[4:16]Bye, books.
[4:17]I'm any time I'm surrounded.
[4:18]It's very nice.
[4:19]Thanks.
[4:20]Including your book.
[4:22]Oh, bitch.
[4:23]Yeah, I left next to my bed, which is where I've been devouring it.
[4:25]Right.
[4:26]Yes.
[4:27]You know, I always have.
[4:28]Yeah, there's like a whole pause.
[4:29]You can see them.
[4:30]We're here.
[4:31]Oh, yeah.
[4:32]I sure can.
[4:33]I can.
[4:34]Amazing.
[4:35]Well, congratulations on your book.
[4:36]Thank you.
[4:37]All right.
[4:38]Tell listeners now that we're BFF series.
[4:39]No, I'm getting them.
[4:40]Tell listeners about your whole story and how it became a book and thank you for sharing
[4:45]all of it.
[4:46]I feel like I know you so well.
[4:47]Oh, my God.
[4:48]You get it.
[4:49]Thank you so much for having me.
[4:51]And I love love sharing with people who share like just a love of books.
[4:55]So it's not just an interview.
[4:56]It's an interview with somebody Stempatico, which I love.
[4:59]Look, I was that kid who, you know, had a difficult lonely life.
[5:04]So the library was really my sanctuary, my absolute sanctuary.
[5:08]It was my sanity, getting lost in these stories.
[5:12]But even when I was a little kid, I noticed sitting amongst those stacks and looking up
[5:17]having finished one, it's kind of one of those flash bulb memories, like having finished
[5:21]one and I closed it and that satisfaction, then looking up what's next, what's next.
[5:25]And noticing that the books were not written by women or by anybody who looked like me and
[5:34]my background, of course, being Dominican and Chinese, so it's black, it's Asian, it's
[5:40]all these other colors.
[5:41]And just women like we just weren't there.
[5:43]And I remember being a kid and being like, I'm not there.
[5:47]And wanting and saying to myself one day, one day, I'll change that, I hope it changes.
[5:53]And I hope I want to see more of that because, you know, we're worthy of that too.
[5:57]So that's part, you know, that was the first seed decades and decades later.
[6:02]I finally got to it, but this story really is about it's a mother daughter story.
[6:08]It's a very American story and it's American stories that in the past hadn't gotten
[6:11]told a lot, right, which is being that child of immigrants, right.
[6:17]What that all comes with, the kind of heaviness, there's a feeling of being the vessel
[6:23]of all your parents hopes and dreams, but also their lives being so difficult, particularly
[6:28]mothers, immigrant mothers, that they're not able to live their truth and they're not
[6:35]able to live in truth.
[6:37]And when that involves who you are as a human being, meaning, where you actually come
[6:43]from, it's a big problem.
[6:45]So I had to discover the secrets that my mother kept about who my father was, which unraveled
[6:53]over decades.
[6:54]I mean, I found out right before she died and she told another story.
[7:01]I thought another man was my father and she took the truth to her grave.
[7:06]And when this book was in edits, no, I found him.
[7:12]Yeah, what now he had, he had passed, but it's one of those things where during the pandemic,
[7:19]I had hired genealogists, I, you know, I did all of that.
[7:25]And between 20th or me answer show that we still could, no records.
[7:29]And this actually was quite common in people from the Caribbean that there were no records
[7:34]even or no people taking the genetic tests.
[7:37]But then there I wasn't edits.
[7:39]One summer day, the book was was coming to fruition because the story isn't about solving
[7:45]that mystery of who my father is.
[7:47]The story is solving the mystery of my mother.
[7:50]Why and how could she keep something so important from me and from everyone?
[7:57]And that's what I did in the story.
[8:00]And I wrote it as kind of a mystery thriller, page-turner, because that's what my life
[8:05]has been like.
[8:06]It's been like that.
[8:08]And also, you know, why do we read people's stories?
[8:11]I find people's stories from what someone might find to be the most mundane.
[8:15]I find so much excitement and just emotion reality in everyone's story.
[8:23]And I want people to feel that totally.
[8:25]Well, you did a good job and I was trying to analyze as I was reading it.
[8:30]What is she doing here?
[8:31]That's like making it because I could not stop reading chocolate.
[8:36]It's filled with chocolate.
[8:37]No.
[8:38]That too.
[8:39]Yeah.
[8:40]First of all, your first two pages were like, boom, listen to what secrets coming at.
[8:43]Those were, that was like an amazing introduction.
[8:47]And then we slowly got to know your mom and you and your background and your brother
[8:51]and all of a sudden we're like, more and more invested in you and your family as the
[8:56]whole memoir goes on and on, just wanting to know like, well, what is she talking about
[9:00]with the picture?
[9:01]And like, what does she mean?
[9:02]And then you would just like drop these little, little things every so often.
[9:05]It's like, keep you going.
[9:06]You're like, wait, what's going on now?
[9:09]I don't know.
[9:10]It was so, it was so great.
[9:11]You just didn't want to stop until you had the full story.
[9:14]And you're funny too.
[9:15]And the way you write it, you know, it's like very boy, you know, very, it's funny.
[9:19]It's like, it's the heartbreak and all of it, you know, of like coming to terms with who
[9:24]we are and our families and all of that, but also like, I don't know, I feel like you poke
[9:28]fun at everything.
[9:29]And yeah.
[9:30]Yeah.
[9:31]So it was a ride.
[9:32]Yeah.
[9:33]It's a ride.
[9:34]But when you come from difficulty, I mean, look, there's that thing about, you know, most
[9:38]comedians are quite depressed.
[9:40]I mean, that's that's partially true.
[9:42]It's like, there's humor saved me in many ways.
[9:47]And it was the way that I could make my mother less angry and less sad and engage more.
[9:56]And so, you know, that kind of, you know, family clown situation and take.
[10:00]and care my little sisters and just managing everything.
[10:02]And you find that the one thing that unites us
[10:04]as people is using, make somebody laugh, right?
[10:07]But the point and see of the why,
[10:09]I'm sure kind of comes through there as well.
[10:12]So I didn't realize,
[10:14]usually in a book that has pictures in the middle,
[10:16]I realized that early,
[10:17]but I didn't until I got to that section.
[10:20]And then I was like, oh my gosh, there are pictures.
[10:22]Yeah.
[10:23]So I know.
[10:25]So then I was particularly struck by the one
[10:27]where you're like, see my mom is looking into the camera,
[10:30]not at me, look at me desperately clinging
[10:32]to my mom's neck to get her attention.
[10:34]Look at her looking at my stepdad,
[10:36]I think it was Marty that she was getting in the picture.
[10:39]And it was sort of, it was just sort of like
[10:40]a heartbreaking thing, you know?
[10:42]Because every little kid, you know,
[10:44]you're just like calling out for attention.
[10:46]And then I don't know,
[10:47]I felt like I was a therapist who'd be like,
[10:49]go back to, you know, have me parent, that little girl,
[10:52]you know, who was still here,
[10:53]I've been a therapy for 15 years.
[10:56]15, that helped me really write the book.
[10:59]Because the thing is, is that that kid, that girl looking,
[11:03]I hadn't, you know, I hadn't seen that picture
[11:05]when I had to dig a pictures for the book
[11:06]and I went back a lot of the, I hadn't seen,
[11:08]you know, decades.
[11:09]And I look at that picture and I know that girl now
[11:12]and I see her and oh my God, she's always wanted
[11:15]the love of her mother, the love of a parent, period.
[11:19]And, you know, that wasn't the case,
[11:22]but that is part of what gets me to understand,
[11:26]you know, who she is and why she was like that.
[11:28]And also myself, but without the therapy,
[11:30]when we're telling you this book would not have happened
[11:32]because it was so important to not be angry
[11:38]and to not have villains or to paint my parents' villains
[11:42]for all these secrets and all these lies,
[11:44]instead to see her as a full human being.
[11:49]And I think, and I hope, and I've heard from readers
[11:52]who are just love getting these notes where they're just
[11:54]like, I was so angry at my parents, I was so hurt,
[11:57]I was so in parents, I'm in come on,
[11:59]we're human beings, we do a lot of things.
[12:01]And they said, you help me to see her as a person
[12:08]as a full person separate from being a parent
[12:12]because we are many more things than that.
[12:14]And we take our full histories into everything.
[12:17]And I don't know if it's forgiveness, I wouldn't say,
[12:20]I don't necessarily forgive
[12:21]and that's only because I think forgiveness requires
[12:23]the steps of apology and change in behavior.
[12:28]And none of my parents have done that.
[12:30]So, however, the understanding that I have of them
[12:34]has brought me so much peace.
[12:37]And it's one of those things I just wish for everybody.
[12:41]Wow, that's nice.
[12:43]I mean, you know, it's nice to feel like you can get that,
[12:47]look, I mean, I don't know that I could fully see
[12:50]my mom as a person, except for me.
[12:53]I mean, that takes work.
[12:55]You have to be very intentional about doing work like that.
[12:57]Yes, it was very intentional.
[12:59]And my intention was fueled by being a mother myself
[13:04]and finding myself a solo parent by the time my daughter was
[13:08]four and not wanting to seeing myself recreating things
[13:14]and desperately not wanting to parent my daughter
[13:18]in the same way.
[13:19]And to really end that, I know this people use these words
[13:22]a lot these days, but generational trauma is real.
[13:25]And I made a commitment to not give that to her,
[13:30]to not hand it down anymore.
[13:32]I wanted to create new rituals and new feelings
[13:36]and new everything and really raise her in a different way.
[13:41]So she wasn't that little girl in the picture
[13:43]looking up in mommy and saying, you know, love me.
[13:47]Like me, love me, you know, that sort of thing.
[13:50]And so I work on that.
[13:51]It's taken years of work.
[13:53]Yeah, for sure.
[13:55]Well, time well spent, great book.
[13:57]No, I'm trying, I'm trying, but yes, the book was done.
[14:02]I know, really.
[14:04]Well, another piece of the book that I really enjoyed
[14:07]was your struggle to fit in and figure out who you were.
[14:11]Like your identity, especially in the teenagers
[14:13]and I wonder how you're approaching this with your own daughter.
[14:16]But just like wanting to dress a certain way,
[14:18]or wanting to look a certain way.
[14:20]And, you know, the scene with your mom
[14:22]when she came down with the afro and you were you in meanwhile
[14:26]were like, you know, doing whatever with moose
[14:28]with your own hair to like get yourself to assimilate
[14:31]essentially.
[14:31]And then in she walks with this like red giant afro,
[14:35]which was also so sad when she had to cover it up
[14:38]and come back downstairs and like that also kind of broke
[14:40]my heart for her.
[14:41]But then you being like, oh, no, no, like different is not good.
[14:44]Like different is not good was the message.
[14:48]That was the message.
[14:49]So what happened was is that we, my brother and I
[14:52]were born in Harlem, right?
[14:54]Dominican family on my mother's side, Chinese father.
[14:57]And then when my mother divorced my Chinese father
[14:59]and she remarried Anglo-American guy who moved us
[15:02]to New Hampshire and New Hampshire in the late 70s
[15:07]was not welcoming of us because of course we're not white folks
[15:13]especially my mother.
[15:14]So she got the message early on.
[15:16]I mean, she tried to kind of rebel.
[15:18]She saw Rita Moreno on Sesame Street
[15:21]with this gorgeous like Auburn afro.
[15:23]And she was like me days.
[15:25]So I want to be like that, you know, and so she did it.
[15:27]And my stepfather was not having it.
[15:31]And so she had to cover her hair.
[15:32]Natural hair was not right.
[15:34]So I did a lot of things that, you know,
[15:38]I we can all say in retrospect,
[15:40]boy, I wish I could have, you know, been braver.
[15:43]I did break out in the sense that I had my hair
[15:45]in different styles every day.
[15:47]By the time I was like a senior in high school,
[15:48]I was like, look, everyone already thinks I'm other.
[15:53]Let me be a little funky, you know.
[15:55]So I started wearing my hair natural and curly
[15:57]and Janet Jacksonie and all that stuff.
[15:59]But even in my professional life, you know,
[16:03]the second I got my TV show was straight in your hair,
[16:07]cut your hair, don't wear hoops.
[16:10]You know, no red lipstick bubble.
[16:12]Like everything was too ethnic to funky to this to that.
[16:16]So that had been something that had been taught to me
[16:19]from the second we moved to New Hampshire.
[16:21]It was being confronted with the idea that
[16:24]I cannot be full American first of all.
[16:27]And second of all, you know, the way I and my people
[16:31]back in Harlem, my family dress and talk and act is all wrong.
[16:37]So I assimilated to survive very much so.
[16:40]And I'll tell this to folks like losing my family
[16:43]and my culture and everything when we moved is a schism
[16:47]in my soul that it will never be fixed
[16:50]because you can't go back.
[16:54]You can't go back.
[16:55]So it is very important to try to,
[16:57]when you're raising, you know, your kids
[16:59]in whatever environment, just make sure that they know
[17:03]that they are fabulous and wonderful,
[17:05]however they choose to express themselves.
[17:07]Do you feel with your daughter, you're immersing her more
[17:10]in culture, like how are you doing that?
[17:12]How are you writing that wrong?
[17:13]Well, unfortunately most of my family has passed.
[17:16]But, you know, she's taken Mandarin forever.
[17:19]So she was able to speak with her grandfather,
[17:21]her kung kung, until he passed away in June.
[17:23]You know, my mother's family's mostly gone.
[17:26]But we've traveled a lot.
[17:28]My friends are a group of wonderful black and Latino women
[17:32]who tears and TTs who just embrace her fully.
[17:36]She actually, because her father was German descent,
[17:39]she's white presenting appearing,
[17:42]but she's very much a Latina.
[17:44]And she's very excited that Anya Taylor Joy is out there
[17:47]because she's Latina and she's like blonde in pale.
[17:50]And she's like, yeah, Latina like her.
[17:53]She's very much aware of all of those dynamics.
[17:57]But also too, you know, we're both queer women,
[18:01]girls, women, girls, and she's 60 now.
[18:04]And she's had a girlfriend for a year.
[18:05]So all of her identities, all the parts who she is
[18:08]that I couldn't express, I'm making sure to respect that
[18:14]in her and to encourage her very much to be, you know,
[18:18]who she really wants to be.
[18:19]And she even shaved the side of her head when she was 10.
[18:22]Oh, wow.
[18:23]It was so cute though.
[18:24]Of course, now she looks back on it.
[18:26]And she's like, what?
[18:27]That was so weird.
[18:28]I was like, it was cool.
[18:30]You're a much cooler mom than me.
[18:32]I have two 15-year-olds, almost 16.
[18:35]And then I have an eight and a nine-year-olds.
[18:37]And you know, they're like, I guess I let my 15-year-old
[18:41]daughter like die her hair during the pandemic
[18:43]because like who cares, you know, but even still.
[18:46]And now my nine-year-old is like, I want purple hair.
[18:48]And like, I, you know, I've got to get pink and purples
[18:51]in my hair.
[18:52]And I'm like, I don't think so.
[18:53]But I don't know.
[18:53]Maybe if that were cooler, I'd be like, why not?
[18:55]No, it's just like, my thing is like, look,
[18:57]let them rebel this way.
[18:58]Like, you know, and I think of course it's me
[19:01]because I wasn't allowed.
[19:02]Right.
[19:03]So trust me when I tell you that I were build later.
[19:06]Um, I feel like there was a lot
[19:09]unsaid about your first year at college.
[19:10]You were like, and then I went to college and I have fun.
[19:13]And then at one point you're like,
[19:15]and I had lots of boyfriends because of that first year
[19:17]of college.
[19:18]And I'm like, what have I did it right here, college?
[19:20]Oh, I was a hot mouse.
[19:21]I was a hot mouse.
[19:23]I was such a hot mess that I was drinking
[19:27]and hooking up with the soccer team and blah, blah.
[19:30]And I ended up, it was kind of like,
[19:33]I quit it to just an absolute beast being led out of a cage
[19:36]because the amount of control that was exerted on me
[19:39]through my childhood and high school at home
[19:42]and the responsibility.
[19:43]I had to get straight A's or death.
[19:45]That's typical Latin thing.
[19:47]And I had my little sisters and I had a job.
[19:51]I was pulling 12 hour days on the weekends.
[19:53]I was working after school and had to get straight A's.
[19:55]So by the time I went to school and all I had to do,
[19:58]literally, all I had to do was go through.
[20:00]class. I didn't know what to do with myself. So I went absolutely nuts. And I spent the next
[20:07]three years making up almost feeling that first year of college. Because my parents, I came back
[20:14]and they got the grades and they were just like, listen, if this is the way it's going to be,
[20:20]money is better spent elsewhere. And I was like, oh, hell no, because it was, it was an escape.
[20:25]Yeah. So I put my head down and I paid attention. I mean, I still,
[20:28]I still acted out once in a while. But you know, have fun with your life, ladies. No judgment, no
[20:35]judgment. Wait, tell me about going into TV and all of that and what you're doing now. Well,
[20:42]I did. So I, you know, I ended up a mags. At first, I was in the art business, which was wild.
[20:46]I have some stories in the book about celebrities and things that happen in that business that
[20:50]Christie's way. He wasn't shut, not a pop. Yeah, two pack. Yeah, two pack. Most of the model
[20:55]for the model for the model. Oh, Kristy. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. It was for me who like went from the stacks
[21:04]of a library in New Hampshire to all, you know, out of college, a couple of years out of college,
[21:10]ending up at Christie's auction house, like kicking Tupac out of the bathroom. And, you know,
[21:15]Christie Burlington and all the fabulous models of the 90s, I was in heaven. But, you know,
[21:21]I did some messy things like get married early because I thought I was what I was supposed to do
[21:27]and get divorced and all those stuff. I ended up in the magazine business and that led to,
[21:32]I kind of, I really did my best to work my way through that, which was not very welcoming to me. Of
[21:38]course, they would say to me, I couldn't be a reporter or journalist because I couldn't be
[21:43]objective because I wasn't white. Oh, stuff. Seriously? Yes. And ask anybody in the business
[21:49]back then this was the 90s that was absolutely the way things were. Things started changing slowly,
[21:54]but then the internet happened and started destroying magazines. So I wrote my first book and ended
[21:59]up promoting it on television and boom, within a year after getting laid off from Honey magazine,
[22:06]I had my own TV show, Daily TV show, and I had a toddler. Oh my gosh. And I was remarried.
[22:12]And that was just wild and I never want to go back because I survived. That was, yeah,
[22:20]that was intense times, but it was a very fulfilling job in many ways, but the most difficult time
[22:26]of my life, for sure. That's a lot. That's a lot of inputs into it. It was a lot of inputs.
[22:33]However, because I ended up in finance, because my stepfather, who he was, you know,
[22:39]my my Chinese father was literally a gangster. And my stepfather was, you know, economics from
[22:45]Columbia, you know, in the tech business early up there in Massachusetts. So I was surrounded by
[22:52]Wall Street Journal and Wall Street. We were cries and lots. I learned all of that through him
[22:58]being a woman of color in that space at that time. That was some trailblazing stuff. So I was able
[23:05]to build an incredible consulting and speaking business and all of that and writing
[23:11]through that. But one thing I have to say is a lot of people say, you know, oh, but yeah,
[23:17]your stepfather and the money stuff that really, really helped you. And I have to say, building
[23:21]my business was very much about Poppy Wong. Like he taught me like how multiple income streams
[23:30]and how to really keep things moving. All of those parents, all of them really kind of shaped
[23:37]how I manage my career for sure. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So what are you doing now then? Are you
[23:43]going to write another book after this and like what's your ambition and all that? Like, yes, yes,
[23:48]yes. Well, thankfully I'm writing. I'm writing writing. This book was a huge dream of mine. And it
[23:54]took, you know, five years from first proposal to fruition. And all I wanted was a hard cover which
[24:00]that I got. But I got a great deal. Paperback comes out this summer in the Spanish language versions
[24:04]now. Yay. So yes, I'm working on my next book. And I'm excited to say that it involves an incredible
[24:13]story of an incredible couple. A Holocaust survivor and the first black woman to own a news network
[24:19]in the country. 63 years married. Gloria Steinem will be writing the forward. Wow. And they were
[24:26]leaders in the feminist movement, the abortion movement. And he was surely chisels campaign manager.
[24:32]Wow. So this is an incredible love story story of resilience. And I just want to write these
[24:39]stories that we don't hear enough. And I think there's a lot more stars of American history that
[24:47]we don't know. So that's what I'm going to be doing. I'm going to be telling their stories.
[24:53]You think an abortion played a big role. And your unlocking clues and stuff to your own history.
[25:00]So interesting to keep it. So of course, think through. Yes. Yes. For sure. Sarah and Dippity,
[25:07]one of my favorite words. Yes, exactly. Do make time to read this is. I mean, I know we talked to
[25:13]tell like, yes, I may book a lecture when you read what like, what's your go to, what's your go to
[25:21]genre or your favorite things to read or whatever. You know what I've been reading now. I go
[25:26]through phases. And right now I'm really into one of my favorites of sci-fi. That's one of my
[25:33]old favorites. My brother and I, our favorite book was June. We were such nerds. And now in the
[25:39]Ted wrongs, like anthology, I'm looking forward to a couple of other sci-fi anthologies.
[25:44]I just got Philip K. Dick's anthology. I love reading women of color for sure because we haven't
[25:50]heard enough. But right now in this moment, you're talking to me. That's where I'm at. I think it's
[25:55]just pure escapism. And I think sometimes it's nice to revisit Philip K. Dick. I've read
[26:01]for decades, but it's just I hadn't read him in a while. And I want to go back there. Amazing.
[26:07]Yeah. Well, quite a story. I mean, from you're, you know, getting pulled over with your family
[26:14]for looking poor to weekend or whatever. And that crazy scene when you are in New Hampshire
[26:19]to just like being a total badass today. I mean, it's just amazing. The whole trajectory
[26:24]is so cool. And I really enjoyed the read and getting to know you through the book. But also just
[26:30]today. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I love, I love being on with book
[26:36]lovers. So thank you so much. Thank you. All right, take care. Take care. Thanks for listening
[26:43]to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram
[26:48]at zibyowens and at Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibyowens.com
[26:54]and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week.
[26:58]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan in fact, texture sound for the sound editing. And thank you to
[27:03]Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and out trim music.