Once I Was You

A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America

By: Maria Hinojosa

Narrated by: Maria Hinojosa

NPR’s Best Books of 2020
BookPage’s Best Books of 2020
Real Simple’s Best Books of 2020
Boston.com readers voted one of Best Books of 2020

“Anyone striving to understand and improve this country should read her story.” —Gloria Steinem, author of My Life on the Road

The Emmy Award–winning journalist and anchor of NPR’s Latino USA tells the story of immigration in America through her family’s experiences and decades of reporting, painting an unflinching portrait of a country in crisis in this memoir that is “quite simply beautiful, written in Maria Hinojosa’s honest, passionate voice” (BookPage).

Maria Hinojosa is an award-winning journalist who, for nearly thirty years, has reported on stories and 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—charging us with the broken system we have today.

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.

Critic reviews

"Veteran journalist Maria Hinojosa, anchor and executive producer of NPR's 'Latino USA' and founder of Futuro Media Group, narrates her story of growing up in a Mexican immigrant family and finding her way in life and in her career in the big city as a young adult. She also describes how her background has influenced her approach to covering immigration issues as a journalist. Narrating her own work allows Hinojosa to put the most fitting vocal emphases on her text. She reads at a leisurely pace in a lower tone, and one hears her professional bearing. Her pronunciation of the Spanish words and phrases throughout the text is, naturally, an asset to the narration."

Our Voice

The raw honesty touched my soul.
I recommend this book to anyone who has immigrant blood.
Thank you for writing this book that has forever changed me.

an intimate and vulnerable memoir

I'm sad that I can't hear this for the first time again! This book is an outpouring of love that paints a complex portrait of american life for migrants across generations.

A must read!

Great chronological details about immigrants through the decades. So many events and sentiments that have been overlooked by the mainstream media, thanks Maria for putting this forward.

wow!

I loved your strength and vulnerability you are truly inspiring to all women! As a daughter of a Mexican immigrant mother with many undocumented cousins, I am grateful for you providing us with a voice.

María the Unbreakable

This book is absolutely amazing. María you're a BAD ASS! This book gives voice to so many of those that have been silenced. It gave a voice to me that like María, struggle with imposter syndrome. A latina who is born in the United States to immigrant parents. A must read for anyone who wants to understand immigration in our country.