My Time to Speak

Reclaiming Ancestry and Confronting Race

Ilia Calderón

• Publisher: Atria Books
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781982103859
• eBook ISBN:
  9781982103866
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

An inspiring, timely, and conversation-starting memoir from the barrier-breaking and Emmy Award–winning journalist Ilia Calderón—the first Afro-Latina to anchor a high-profile newscast for a major Hispanic broadcast network in the United States—about following your dreams, overcoming prejudice, and embracing your identity. As a child, Ilia Calderón felt like a typical girl from Colombia. In Chocó, the Afro-Latino province where she grew up, your skin could be any shade and you'd still be considered blood. Race was a non-issue, and Ilia didn't think much about it—until she left her community to attend high school and college in Medellín. For the first time, she became familiar with horrifying racial slurs thrown at her both inside and outside of the classroom.From that point on, she resolved to become "deaf" to racism, determined to overcome it in every way she could, even when she was told time and time again that prominent castings weren't "for people like you." When a twist of fate presented her the opportunity of a lifetime at Telemundo in Miami, she was excited to start a new life, and identity, in the United States, where racial boundaries, she believed, had long since dissolved and equality was the rule.Instead, in her new life as an American, she faced a new type of racial discrimination, as an immigrant women of color speaking to the increasingly marginalized Latinx community in Spanish.Now, Ilia draws back the curtain on the ups and downs of her remarkable life and career. From personal inner struggles to professional issues—such as being directly threatened by a Ku Klux Klan member after an interview—she discusses how she built a new identity in the United States in the midst of racially charged violence and political polarization. Along the way, she'll show how she's overcome fear and confronted hate head on, and the inspirational philosophy that has always propelled her forward.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Prologue: Eyes of Hate
• Chapter 1: Kerosene in Our Souls
• Chapter 2: This Is How We Dance in El Chocó
• Chapter 3: Coffee, Roots, and Blood
• Chapter 4: Black Horse
• Chapter 5: Rebel
• Chapter 6: The Perfect Tone
• Chapter 7: This Audition Is Not for You
• Chapter 8: The First Time, the First One
• Chapter 9: Not This Audition Either
• Chapter 10: My New Minority
• Chapter 11: A New Challenge with an Impact
• Chapter 12: Love Isn’t Blind
• Chapter 13: Returning to Where I’d Never Been: Welcome Home!
• Chapter 14: One Hundred Percent Anna
• Chapter 15: The Day I Blew Up
• Chapter 16: What Offends Sells
• Chapter 17: The First, but Not the Only One
• Chapter 18: Silences That Heal and Silences That Kill
• Chapter 19: The High Price of Silence
• Chapter 20: Until the Last Breath
• Chapter 21: Inconvenient Caravans
• Chapter 22: Law-Abiding Silences
• Chapter 23: The Last Word
• Chapter 24: Returning to Kerosene
• Epilogue: American Girl
• Letter to Anna
• Photographs
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Copyright