The View co-host talks to People CHICA about embracing her roots, rising above challenges, and sharing her most valuable life lessons in her new memoir I Am These Truths
Por Lena Hansen
In her revealing new memoir I Am These Truths, Sunny Hostin tackles topics like her biracial identity, facing discrimination, and the obstacles she’s overcome in her career. “I was pretty nervous about sharing so much, but I knew that once I made the decision to do it, I had to be brutally honest about everything,” she tells People CHICA. “What I was most concerned about is that in telling my story I was also going to be telling the story of my mom, my dad, my grandmother, my husband, and my children, and I wanted to make sure I did it justice.”
During the cathartic writing process, the View co-host had to take breaks while remembering some of the more difficult moments in her life. “I had to start and stop many times. I was literally sobbing,” she says. “I was almost grieving as I was narrating it and reliving it.”
From her Puerto Rican mother, Sunny “learned resilience,” she says. “For her, she came second and I was the priority. She had me at such a young age, at 18, that she lived a life of a dream deferred. She taught me how to mother, how to love, how to put someone else first, how to sacrifice.” Sunny’s father, who is Black, also had a big influence on her life. “It pains me when I hear people say so often that Black dads are not present in the home, especially young teenage dads. My father has been present in my life every single day. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t speak to him. He is an example for me of what a man should be.”
In the book, Hostin also talks openly about racism in the United States. “People say, ‘I don’t see color, I don’t see race,’ and I say, ‘You don’t see colors? So how do you drive? You don’t see the stop light?'” she says. “My father is truly someone who doesn’t relate to people based on color. That’s why I think he was able to marry someone like my mom, who is a white Hispanic, in the ’60s.” It still boggles her mind that in 1967, just one year before her parents married, it was illegal for interracial couples to wed in the U.S. Growing up, she felt that her parents were treated differently because of their differing skin colors. “People would stare at our family and call him names,” she recalls.
Today, she talks to her daughter Paloma, 14, and her son Gabriel, 18, about the Black Lives Matter movement. “My children are incredibly resilient. As a person of color, of course we talk about race. We are at a divisive time in our country,” she says. “They have become their own advocates. It’s unbelievable how active they are in what’s going on in the country in terms of race, in terms of this election.”
Read the full story at PeopleEnEspanol.com.