"We grow up and live our lives thinking we know who we are, who our family is. We trust the story our parents tell us, but... what if what you were told about who you are is just that, a story? When the truth is buried, it is buried alive." This reflection belongs to Carmen Rita Wong, a renowned American journalist and writer. An expert in finance and founder of Malecon Productions LLC, she was the co-creator and host of the television show On the Money on CNBC. She also contributed to The New York Times and taught at New York University. A decorated career she pursued while struggling to know who she really was, why she felt lonely within her large multicultural family.
She narrates this journey in her book Why Didn't You Tell Me? (HarperCollins). The keys were with Lupe, her Dominican mother. But Lupe took them to the grave, giving false clues along the way. Carmen Rita's birth certificate lists Peter Wong, Papi, a Chinese immigrant who was "entertaining and messed up," dabbling in small-time mafia in Chinatown and addicted to gambling, as her father. Alongside her brother Alex, she was raised as his daughter in Manhattan. But when Lupe was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Marty, the Italian-American banker whom her mother had married - who had given her four sisters, a house with a white picket fence in New Hampshire, and acted as a stepfather - confessed that he was her real father.
It turned out to be another lie, "the great family tradition." In 2021, as her memoir was about to go to print, one of the platforms where her team of genealogy experts was tracing the origin of her DNA, managed to unveil her true biological father. He was Florencio Expósito Velázquez, an immigrant from Icod de los Vinos, Tenerife, who after passing through Venezuela settled in New York in the early 70s, where he was known as Frank, an art lover with a reputation as a Don Juan.
Florencio had passed away 19 years ago. Nine of his 10 siblings had also passed. But Carmen Rita was fortunate. Still alive was her lively 'Aunt Carmen', the same person who managed to gather in Candelaria the entire Tenerife family of the journalist, who was welcomed with honors as their new cousin. "Setting foot on the island and being received with open arms has been a gift. It generated some apprehension in me, but I have always had an adventurous spirit. I saw this journey as something the universe had reserved for me. I feel immense gratitude for everything I have experienced," Carmen Rita recounts.
From the moment when Verónica, Florencio's legitimate daughter, reached out to her in New York, she has received "affection." "She could have rejected or ignored me when I found her, but she welcomed me along with her daughters and introduced me to Aunt Carmen," she recalls. Aunt Carmen didn't need much time to recognize her: "In her, I saw my brother."
Carmen Rita arrived on the island with Benita, the widow of her brother Alex and "her great support." They felt dizzy climbing Teide, but the most intense feelings came later. "There was a moment when a cousin, Raquel, approached me. She took my hands with great care, and as I looked at her, I saw my own eyes looking back at me, like a mirror. What was reflected was not just a person with a striking physical resemblance to me, but love. I held back tears: I was overwhelmed by the connection I felt, the resemblance, and the reality that yes, here was my family. I am still positively shocked," she admits.
She states that her identity remains that of "the New York diaspora in the 70s: Dominican and Chinese," but with an added "fortunate" aspect, that of "the culture and people of Tenerife."
She promises to return with her daughter, Bianca Luz, as soon as the promotion of SHADE, the documentary she has just produced dedicated to Dominican models who have gained recognition in an industry that once ignored them, is over. "I no longer feel that sense of something missing. For decades, my mind and heart were full of questions, with the feeling that something, someone, was absent. That feeling has disappeared," she points out. And she embraces Aunt Carmen. Together, they order another plate of papas arrugadas. "I'm obsessed with them. They are ridiculously delicious and addictive!" she confesses.