Once I Was You

Starred review from June 8, 2020
Veteran broadcast journalist Hinojosa discusses immigration in a defiant memoir that probes family lore, public policy, and mainstream media bias. In 1962, when Hinojosa was a baby, her family emigrated from Mexico to Chicago when her father was invited to join the faculty at the University of Chicago, but an immigration agent, misinterpreting her minor skin rash as a disease, tried to separate her from her family. Annual visits to Mexico maintained her dual Mexican-American identity, but reentry to the U.S. was dependent on a green card and emphasized how “people were and are still looking at us—immigrants—as aliens.” As a student at Barnard College, she hosted a Latin radio show and earned an internship at NPR. Hired by “the one other Latino at the network,” she helped launch Weekend Edition Saturday. In 1986, while covering the Texas sesquicentennial, she visited Harlingen, “the first immigrant detention camp I ever saw” and the nation’s largest. Horrific conditions spurred her ongoing investigations which continue today. She discusses the history of immigration under presidents Clinton (while “Bill Clinton was being celebrated for eating burritos and enchiladas, the new president was also cracking down on immigration”) and Obama (“In 2014, under President Barack Obama, ‘removals’ clocked in at 414,481”), details the passage of immigration legislation, and highlights the high cost of detention (“$3 billion for the 2018 fiscal year”). The result is a powerful memoir that doubles as an essential immigration primer.

Starred review from June 1, 2020
Award-winning journalist Hinojosa, host of Latino USA on NPR, is known for covering overlooked and marginalized communities. She has now written a formidable memoir sparked by a chance encounter. When Hinojosa spies a little girl alone in an airport, she is transported back to her own scary arrival in the early 1960s as a child from Mexico; she tells the ni�a, Once I was you. From this emotional beginning, Hinojosa narrates her turbulent life story as a marginalized woman with allegiance to two countries. She lays out her personal and professional struggles and successes within a well-researched historical context, while also providing behind-the-scenes accounts of her groundbreaking and often traumatic work on 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina and the creation of the Frontline report on the miseries of immigration detention camps, titled Lost in Detention. As far-ranging and politically illuminating as Hinojosa's memoir becomes, it is also laser-focused and intimate, and at its heart are portrayals of immigrants, especially immigrant children. Although the situations of those children are dire and hope seems unrealistic, Hinojosa promises to keep telling their stories. A fascinating and essential journalist's memoir.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from November 1, 2020

Hinojosa's (Raising Raul: Adventures Raising Myself and My Son) latest is illuminating reading in many respects. Mexico-born, the author came to the United States with her family in the early 1960s as an infant. Here, she covers her early life growing up with her family in Chicago, and details her college experiences to explain how she became a reporter. Most important, her book focuses on the experiences of immigrants in America; Hinojosa's efforts as a reporter of these stories and struggles are also examined closely. She explains how to tell a story in a way that touches viewers but also the effect on her own life, as she discusses facing down media executives, who saw her work on Latino issues as having an "agenda." Hinojosa describes the documentaries on immigration she has produced and gives a thorough history of the past 30 years of immigration laws and their impact on people coming to this country. Seeing the world through Hinojosa's eyes, readers travel to the Texas for-profit prisons now housing immigrants who were cited for, in many cases, minor offenses, and those awaiting deportation to countries they left as infants. VERDICT This riveting account will appeal to anyone with an interest in the history of immigration and current U.S. policies.--Amy Lewontin, Northeastern Univ. Lib., Boston

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

The making of an activist journalist. Acclaimed Mexican-born journalist Hinojosa, whose many awards include four Emmys and a Peabody, reflects candidly on her identity as a Latina, feminist, and political activist as well as a wife, mother, and prominent reporter, documentarian, and producer. Unlike many Latinx immigrants who come to the U.S. to escape oppression, Hinojosa arrived in 1962 as a 1-year-old when her father was recruited for a position as a research scientist at the University of Chicago. Growing up in the "multicultural oasis" of Hyde Park, she was unaware of the "otherwise intensely racially segregated city." Hinojosa went from the elite University of Chicago Laboratory School to Barnard, where she hosted a weekly three-hour Latinx show at the college's radio station. An internship at NPR's All Things Considered followed, which in turn led to a job as a production assistant on Weekend Edition with Scott Simon, a new NPR venture. Hinojosa's career is nothing less than impressive: She has worked at CNN, PBS, and CBS; founded and anchored Latino USA on NPR; founded the nonprofit Futuro Media; and created In the Thick, a national political podcast focusing on journalists and experts of color. If her life sounds charmed, though, Hinojosa is frank about the insecurities, panic attacks, PTSD, and depression she has suffered as well as the challenges she faced in a field dominated by White men. "I have never met a Latina, Ivy Leaguer, radio producer, international traveler who loves theater, speaks two languages, and is so politically aware!" exclaimed one NPR news executive. She struggled, too, to define her perspective as a journalist, which increasingly focused on the plight of immigrants. In 1986, she saw her first immigrant detention camp and came away shocked. She movingly bears witness to the dehumanizing, degrading treatment of immigrants; everyone, she urges, must take action "to make us all feel connected and visible." Forthright, important testimony from an impassioned reporter.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. (Online Review)