I Am My Father's Daughter

February 13, 2006
When Salinas, a three-time Emmy-winning news anchor for Noticiero Univisión, started working, in 1981, there weren't many minority women in positions of authority in the news business. At that time, most Spanish-language programming came from Mexico and didn't reflect the interests or perspectives of Hispanic-Americans. As Salinas recounts the story of her successful career, she credits her hard-working parents, straight-laced upbringing, willingness to try new things and largely on-the-job training in news reporting. Like other media memoirs (such as Andrea Mitchell's 2005 Talking Back
), this one contains irresistible firsthand accounts of interviewing political celebrities, in this case Noriega, Pinochet, Fujimori and subcomandante Marcos. There's a second, more personal thread woven into the career story: Salinas's mission to discover the truth about her recently deceased father, who, it turns out, was a Catholic priest before marrying her mother. Although this quest never becomes a major plot, some passages from Salinas's father's writings are remarkable, particularly his 1944 letter to the U.S. Department of War declining to "sacrifice my life... the most esteemed human asset... to defend a system that... lacks a seal of kindness." This entry into the crowded memoir category would be a great graduation gift for a career-oriented young Latina.