My Time to Speak

March 1, 2020

Growing up in the Afro-Latino province of Chocó, Colombia, the Emmy Award-winning Calderón never felt the slings and arrows of racism until she moved to Medellín to attend high school and college. She chose to shut out the slurs, but when she moved to Miami to work for Telemundo, she encountered another kind of prejudice as an immigrant woman of color addressing the Latinx community in Spanish. Here she offers both memoir and inspiration, explaining how her readers can be brave and embrace their identity, something she learned well while countering face-to-face threats from a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

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June 29, 2020
Afro-Latina Univision news anchor Calderon takes on racism in this fascinating memoir. She opens with a frightening scene in 2016: during an interview in rural North Carolina—out of cell phone range—a Ku Klux Klan leader threatens to “burn” her (he lit a cross on fire, but allowed her to leave). In the ensuing chapters, Calderón shares her life experiences, beginning with her childhood growing up mixed-race in Istmina, a small, isolated town in Colombia, where she is raised by her mother and grandfather in the 1970s. (Of her ethnicity, she writes: “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.”) Calderon studied social work in college, but when she learned of an opening at a local TV news show, she auditioned and landed the spot. Her story then unfolds in a series of journalistic career moves; she eventually came to America to work for Telemundo and then Univision, where she became the first Afro-Latina to host the evening news. Whether covering Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017 or reporting on caravans at the southern border in 2018, Calderon stresses the importance of confronting racism head on, using her platform to report on and expose injustice. Calderon’s powerful story will resonate with readers.

July 1, 2020
A prominent news anchor recounts her life. Univision anchor Calder�n 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 Medell�n, Colombia's second-largest city, Calder�n, the only black or mixed-race student, became increasingly aware of inequality, poverty, and racial injustice. In Medell�n 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." Calder�n recounts her professional rise as co-anchor in Bogot�, 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.

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