Rita Zoey Chin spent most of her growing-up years in Maryland. But, it wasn’t the kind of growing-up you might assume when you first meet the pretty, slender accomplished woman with the long, dark hair.
Her father beat her with fists and a belt buckle – once threw a brick at her when she woke him to say she wasn’t feeling well. Her mother, depressed and angry, rejected her and called the cops on her, with a story Chin was 11 when she started running away, by 14 she was in jail. She lived in state-run institutions, or on the streets, and often slept in the beds of people who wanted something from her. She hit bottom when got addicted to cocaine.
Somehow she survived. The life she grew into and how she made sense of it is the subject of her new memoir, "Let the Tornado Come." She joins Sheilah in the studio to talk about it.
