ONCE I WAS YOU

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.