MY TIME TO SPEAK

A prominent news anchor recounts her life.

Univision anchor Calderón offers a moving and timely memoir reflecting on her experiences as a woman of color: “There’s no doubt. I…am black. Colombian, Latina, Hispanic, Afro-Colombian, mixed, and anything else people may want to call me or I choose to call myself, but I’m always black. I may bear Castilian Jewish and Syrian Arab last names, but I’m simply black in the eyes of the world.” Growing up in Istmina, Colombia, she was taught tolerance. “Understanding, equality, fairness, solidarity, generosity,” she writes, “those were the messages that were repeated” at her family’s table. But when she attended a Catholic high school in Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest city, Calderón, the only black or mixed-race student, became increasingly aware of inequality, poverty, and racial injustice. In Medellín for college, she decided to major in social work, hoping to effect change in her own country. When a chance opportunity landed her a job at a local news station, however, her focus changed to journalism. “I’d found a profession in which inquiry was applauded instead of punished,” she writes, “and my boldness wasn’t an obstacle but expected and approved.” Calderón recounts her professional rise as co-anchor in Bogotá, as newscaster at Telemundo in Miami, and finally as anchor for Univision. “It’s good,” she admits, “nobody ever told me I was going to be the first Afro-descendant to anchor national newscasts in Spanish media wherever I went!” Her positions have afforded her visibility and power, and much of her memoir bears witness to oppression and discrimination. “What kind of country are we leaving the new generations?” she asks. “Or rather, what kind of society are we handing over to them? One where fundamental rights are violated and no one says anything?” For her—and, she hopes, her readers—there is no choice but to speak out.

A candid memoir that sends an urgent message.