By Princess Gabbara
In Bustle’s Q&A series 28, successful women describe exactly what their lives looked like when they were 28 — what they wore, where they worked, what stressed them out most, and what, if anything, they would do differently. This time, The View co-host Sunny Hostin reflects on how 28 was both a tumultuous and transformative year for her as a young trial lawyer living in Maryland.
Since March, Asunción “Sunny” Hostin and her co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar, and Meghan McCain have been filming episodes of The View using iPhones, which she describes as both seamless and abundant in bloopers. While she misses interacting with the crew and live audience, working from home means more bonding time for her family.
“[Quarantine] brought our family closer together,” Hostin tells Bustle. “I co-host The View and then I was doing 20/20, GMA, and Night Line. My husband Manny, who’s an orthopedic surgeon, would leave to see patients early, so he was out of the house at 6 a.m., then my kids are athletes so we were like ships passing. We started new traditions like family game night, which got real competitive.”
The Emmy-winning journalist is also currently celebrating the release of her memoir, I Am These Truths: A Memoir Of Identity, Justice, and Living Between Worlds (available in English and Spanish on Sept. 22). The book takes readers through Hostin’s upbringing as a biracial woman — she was raised by a Puerto Rican mother and Black father in the south Bronx — as well as how her experiences as a federal prosecutor impact her as a broadcast journalist. Hostin says she didn’t think she had enough of a story for a memoir at first, but thanks to encouragement from her agent and Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, she began writing.
“I learned that I am more resilient than I thought I was,” Hostin tells Bustle. “When I had [the memoir] in front of me, I constantly had these moments when I realized, ‘Wow, this experience was not great. That was a failure, but I turned that failure into a lesson,’ which is an important tool.” One of those tough times was at age 28, when Hostin felt stuck at a law firm that wasn’t treating her well. To make matters worse, a co-worker she was dating ended up bad mouthing her to the company. But it was also the year when she met her husband Manny at a bagel shop a couple blocks away from her apartment.
Read the full interview at Bustle.com.