u003cbu003eNPR’s Best Books of 2020u003c/bu003eu003cbru003e u003cbu003eu003ciu003eBookPageu003c/iu003eu003c/bu003eu003cbu003e’s Best Books of 2020u003c/bu003eu003cbru003e u003cbu003eu003ciu003eReal Simpleu003c/iu003eu003c/bu003eu003cbu003e’s Best Books of 2020u003c/bu003eu003cbru003e u003cbu003eu003ciu003eBoston.com u003c/iu003eu003c/bu003eu003cbu003ereaders voted one of Best Books of 2020u003c/bu003eu003cbru003e u003cbru003eu003cbu003e“Anyone striving to understand and improve this country should read her story.” —Gloria Steinem, author of u003ciu003eMy Life on the Roadu003c/iu003eu003c/bu003eu003cbru003e u003cbru003eu003cbu003eThe u003c/bu003eu003cbu003eEmmy Award–winning journalist and anchor of NPR’s u003c/bu003eu003ciu003eu003cbu003eLatino USAu003c/bu003eu003c/iu003eu003cbu003e 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” (u003c/bu003eu003ciu003eu003cbu003eBookPageu003c/bu003eu003c/iu003eu003cbu003e).u003c/bu003eu003cbru003eu003cbru003eMaria 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.”u003cbru003e u003cbru003eIn u003ciu003eOnce I Was Youu003c/iu003e, 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.u003cbru003e u003cbru003eAn 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.u003cbru003e u003cbru003eAlso available in Spanish as u003ciu003eUna vez fui túu003c/iu003e.