Once I Was You
Published by Simon & Schuster
“Anyone striving to understand and improve this country should read [this memoir]” from the Emmy Award–winning journalist and anchor of NPR’s Latino USA (Gloria Steinem).
For nearly thirty years, Maria Hinojosa has reported on communities in America that often go ignored by the mainstream media—from tales of hope in the South Bronx to the unseen victims of the War on Terror and the first detention camps in the US. Bestselling author Julia Álvarez has called her “one of the most important, respected, and beloved cultural leaders in the Latinx community.”
In Once I Was You, Maria shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the South Side of Chicago. She offers a personal and illuminating account of how the rhetoric around immigration has not only long informed American attitudes toward outsiders, but also sanctioned willful negligence and profiteering at the expense of our country’s most vulnerable populations.
An urgent call to fellow Americans to open their eyes to the immigration crisis and understand that it affects us all, this honest and heartrending memoir paints a vivid portrait of how we got here and what it means to be a survivor, a feminist, a citizen, and a journalist who owns her voice while striving for the truth.
Also available in Spanish as Una vez fui tú.
“A powerful memoir that doubles as an essential immigration primer.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Fascinating.” —Booklist, starred review
“In these times of love and hate, Maria Hinojosa’s astonishing story is medicine, healing, illumination.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street
For nearly thirty years, Maria Hinojosa has reported on communities in America that often go ignored by the mainstream media—from tales of hope in the South Bronx to the unseen victims of the War on Terror and the first detention camps in the US. Bestselling author Julia Álvarez has called her “one of the most important, respected, and beloved cultural leaders in the Latinx community.”
In Once I Was You, Maria shares her intimate experience growing up Mexican American on the South Side of Chicago. She offers a personal and illuminating account of how the rhetoric around immigration has not only long informed American attitudes toward outsiders, but also sanctioned willful negligence and profiteering at the expense of our country’s most vulnerable populations.
An urgent call to fellow Americans to open their eyes to the immigration crisis and understand that it affects us all, this honest and heartrending memoir paints a vivid portrait of how we got here and what it means to be a survivor, a feminist, a citizen, and a journalist who owns her voice while striving for the truth.
Also available in Spanish as Una vez fui tú.
“A powerful memoir that doubles as an essential immigration primer.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Fascinating.” —Booklist, starred review
“In these times of love and hate, Maria Hinojosa’s astonishing story is medicine, healing, illumination.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street
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