Soledad O'Brien

I like Soledad O'Brien as a reporter, but part of this book makes me wish she stuck to only being on TV. The descriptions of her childhood and education is hard to step into because her use of staccato sentences are devoid of any personality as an author. That's a pretty difficult thing to accomplish when writing about yourself. The memoir picks up when she describes Hurricane Katrina and reporting from Haiti. The book does have some interesting vignettes about interviewees who have had a profound affect on her personal life and view of race. Overall, O'Brien's writing is disjointed.

If you're looking for a book about race relations in the media, it's worth a read.… (més)

Latino in America
Soledad O’Brien with Rose Marie Arce
Celebra, a division of Penguin Group (USA), Inc. 2009
ISBN 978-0-451-22946-5

Latino in America is a new phenomenon. A collection of stories from Latinos across the U.S. Stories ranging from young girls attempting to graduate from high school to gang members joining together to keep kids out of gangs to movie stars only able to acquire roles acting as maids.

This book is an offshoot from the televised special by CNN called, “Latino in America” which created an uproar among Latinos. These Latino stories intentions were to represent the many successes of Latino individuals. The stories depict Latinos struggling to better themselves in circumstances that are far from ideal. The book did not demonstrate any resolutions from any of these situations except the hard work and perseverance of each individual. The cry caused by the CNN special is the many voices of Latinos across the US exclaiming their “true success stories.”

In the book, I found a definition that is sorely lacking in the dialogue about Latinos. O’Brien defines Latinos as:
Latino is an American identity. It is a word to describe Americans who are drawn to each other by this intangible cultural link, the similarity of the way we run our families, our devotion to faith, and the warmth of our personalities, our connection to a history that recognizes no border to the south. Latinos are a people who celebrate the new culture they’ve created in the United States while struggling each day with whether we need to assimilate or integrate into this new society. We ask ourselves what good things we want to preserve from our culture and what American values we want to or need to adopt. And that question never goes away, not one, two, or three generations beyond immigration.

The stories in the book encompassed a wide range of experience. Yet I was surprised by the lack of Middle Class Latino experience among the tales told. May CNN discover that one show cannot navigate the entire Latino experience.… (més)