Book title: Once I Was You
Author: Mara Hinojosa
ISBN: 9781982128678
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, Inc.
“I took several deep breaths and told myself that I had a responsibility to make this internship worth it. You didn’t suffer through four years of classes at a top college not to be bold, right? You have to make this worth it – for you and your parents. It was like the immigrant gene took over. I had to do this. I had to try.”
THERE are two main reasons why I picked this book to review. I love memoirs because they are stories that help us understand other persons’ life experiences, allow us to learn from the challenges and triumphs and help broaden our understanding of the world.
I also like to read books written by other journalists, especially an Emmy award-winning journalist like Maria Hinojosa, to enhance my journalistic skills, expose myself to different reporting styles and deepen my understanding of certain issues.
And what did I learn from the book? A lot about immigrants — Mexican, African, Chinese and Japanese — in America. In this book, Hinojosa tells the story of Mexican immigration in America through her family’s experiences. She also talks about the history of African, Chinese and Japanese in the country.
Hinojosa was born in Mexico City in 1961. Her father, Dr Raul Hinojosa, MD, was selected by the University of Chicago to continue his research on the temporal bone at the institution. He was required to become a US citizen in order to work at the university.
Hinojosa, her siblings and her mother immigrated to America in 1962 by obtaining green cards or permanent residency cards which granted them legal residency and work authorisation. However, they were still able to keep their Mexican citizenship.
Since it is a memoir, she talks about the first car her father bought — a green Dodge station wagon in 1969 and how it changed their lives.
“It was mobility for us as we drove fearlessly through Chicago at thirty-five miles an hour and watched segregation manifest across the city.”
Hinojosa also writes about the first apartment her father bought in America because he was making more money than he could make in Mexico .
“We didn’t have any extra money, so we bought the apartment as it is, and it had just been remodelled by an Iranian doctor and his wife. It was in the kitchen with the crazy wallpaper as our backdrop that we would spend most of our time together as a family around a table for six,” she recalled.
Hinojosa , whose journalist credits included reporting for various TV networks including CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), CNN (Cable News Network) and NPR (National Public Radio), and anchoring and executive producing the Peabody Award- winning show ‘Latina USA”, worked as an intern at NPR while waiting to graduate from Barnard College.
By then, at 22, she was already Pan-Latin American, feminist, artist, political activist, radio show host, influencer, community creator, intellectual and anti-intellectual.
On her first day at NPR, Hinojosa recalled that Ronald Reagan was about to be sworn as president for his second term and ATC (All Things Considered), a show by NPR, was planning its coverage of the official event.
“I knew about the unofficial protests that were being organised. I was sitting on a story that no one had brought up.
“I took several deep breaths and told myself that I had a responsibility to make this internship worth it. You didn’t suffer through four years of classes at a top college not to be bold, right? You have to make this worth it – for you and your parents.
It was like the immigrant gene took over. I had to do this. I had to try.”
Hinojosa also talks about covering the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Centre in New York. By then, she had married and was the mother of two young children.
“The attacks on the WTC changed my life in ways that covering a story never had before. I had been to war zones, but they were always faraway places that I would travel to report on and then come home. Now, my home had become a war zone.
On a regular basis, I went to Ground Zero or to the Ground Zero of pain in the homes of people who had lost someone on 9/11. Afterward, I caught the subway home to my community miles away from downtown: everyone there was busy trying to make life seem normal – not for the adults, but for the little New Yorkers who were kids like mine. Normal meant pretending not to be terrified for them.”
In her memoir, Hinojosa also talks about visiting New Orleans several weeks after Katrina, a devastating hurricane that hit the United States in 2005, causing over 1,800 deaths and billions of dollars in damage.
She was there to do a story on the abuse of workers in the corporate cleanup business.
After reading her memoir, I understand what makes Hinojosa an award winning journalist.
An award winning journalist has to be bold and hardworking and she is definitely bold and diligent, delving into the stories of immigrants who came before her to America and stories of sexual assault in a detention camp.
It is not an easy book to read. But once you start, it is hard to put down. It is definitely a good book for any serious journalist.
