As this book continues they are grateful for your continued support so we hope youll also consider making a donation. You can do it online or text donate, heres the number. 415 329 4231. 4153294231 and you can text the word donate tothat number. Id also like to thank the foundation for supporting todays good little event. I like the name of that. It is my pleasure right now, my just overwhelming, deep , i cant even tell you how much i love this woman, its my Church Welcome my dear friend sunny hostin, any awardwinning legal journalist and cohost. I worked with sonny for many years and we talked about likeisters and brothers we fight and its almost read her new book is called, here it is. I am thestruths. Its a memoir of identity, just and living between worlds. Its a revealing look at her really incredible story. Sonny grew up in thesouth bronx and through hard work , determination and her parents and family she obtained a law degree. She went on to become a federal prosecutor and was soon recognized for her work with women and children. Shes a fighter, shes in it to do good and help people. She went to notre dame and after the courtroom sonny became an illegal analyst and was one of the first reporters to cover trade on martintaff. Shcontinues to use her platform to be an advocate for social justice and provide a powerful voice for voiceless people of this world. I am sthrilled to be here today to discuss her story and the timely things thatshe explored throughout her book. One more note before we get started, a quick reminder we will be tang audience questions and we may do it at the end but we may do it throughout. It just depends if something is related to what were talking about so please submit your questions in the chat box. Sunny hostin, we have so muc to talk about, how are you . Im well, im so happy to be here with you even though its virtual. I wish we were there in the same roobut im happy to be on this journey with you my friend. Why did you decide to write i am ese truths . I just feel that the truth of it all is that you dont hold the power to be the difference and you know that ive alwaysbelieved that. And i think that at this time were in the middle of a pandemic, and economic crisis , a National Debate over policing. A delayed, what i think is a delayed reckoning with systemicracism. And i have been journaling for so long and i have been writing and i thought if not now, wn . And i have spoken to Justice Trayvon Martin which sounds like a huge name drop but its the truth. I talked to her a lot about sharing my story and my story as you know don has no shortage of success and i thought its time to share that, work and all because my story is painful, when you grow up in the south bronx project with teenage parents and you want to share all of that. Is it aspirational enough and she said youve got to share it as it is. And if you gave your story to other people and promise me one thing, you do it in spanish and in english because its so important for those people that may be struggling with english as a second language and english as you know is my second language. With everything thats going on in the world, do that for the little girl and little boy that will read you in spanish and have hope. Im sure you saw what are people going to learn, if anyone is writing a book they do that and especially when you have the humility, you wonder is anyone going to care what i write . You said you have more failures than you have successes. But people dont realize its kind of like those, you take those failures and those are Building Blocks to success. Why did you feel that way, why did you feel like you have a lease failures and whatever and did you struggle with thinking that no ones going to care or absolutely. In the age of social media i get immediate feedback on the show and i tried to be a voice for the voiceless because that seat on the view iso very important. I would get these messages like were talking about income ineality and youre talking about verty and youre talking about all that. Youre sitting on the view. You dont know anything about it and i justrember thinking they dont know. People dont know my story. They dont know how hardits been. Acu on the view and they think overnight success. They dont know youve been working at this for decades. For well over 25 years. Its just, this is the success youre seeing but youre not seeing a failures d there have just been so many of them. What did you learn from those failures as people are listening, what did you learn from that . You say i always use myhaters as motivators and what did you learn from those failures . Ive learned a tremendous amount of resilience. Ive learned as my father used to say you have to be go twice as long to go ha as far. No onesoing to take excellence fm you so every time, there have been many times my contract was in the news so i knew that i had done my best. That i had been excellent. And so i could lead with my head up. And i certainly learned that and i learned that there would be another day. I learned to use my voice. I learned that humility is okay. I actually also learned recently that im not as good at sticking up for myself as i am at sticking up for other people. Who told you that . My husband told me, you did. I know manny told you that. Our office used to be right across from each other and we would often look to each other for comfort and feedback but go on sunny. Youve often said lean in, sunny and if you dont stick up for yourself and its so true. And i write in the book how its really easy to stick up for other people, to tell other peoples stories. It certainly was hard for me to tell this story but i tell the story of my parents, im telling my mothers story, my mother didnt mefor about a week after she read the book actually. I talk about addiction, i talk about Mental Health and i bear a lot of secrets in that sense. And i found that my, i did not want to talk about discrimination, i did not want to raise my hand and say this is happening to me, is this true . Dont treat me this way. I should be valued more. I did not want to do those things. I found that outabout myself. Its a little bit shocking i talk the talk and i can defend other people and stick up for victims but there was, it was really hard for me to do it for myself. Let me ask you, i want to ask you about the title of the book but i have to ask you to speak up on something you said which is i think being where we are , theres a lot of advice we can offer people. Not just in business but in professional life,anywhere. You said often times when you get to be the person we know as you get up its a pyramid, its rarefied air. So you want to stick up for yourself and you want to stick up for other people but then you wonder, you worry if i do that, am i going to lose my platform and therefore there wont be anyone like me with this voice. Was that part of it . It was a huge consideration. Theres this se that i dont get an email or a twee or you kno, id be on the street and mothers and even young pelecome up to me and say my g, thank you for being who you are. You represent me. And that meant a lot for me. And then i would say if i sticmy neck out even for myself, there wont be someone like me onhe view and i rememb i write about it in the book, one of the reasons don that i always wanted to be a broadcast journalist is because on television, we had one tv growing up and i read a lot of books but we didnt watch lots of tv but what we did watch his 60 minutes. We watched it every sunday religiously. And i would pretend to be one of the reporters. They didnt even look like me and my parents were like dont do that as youre not going to be able to seat yourself so i remember the power of representation so the thought that i would take a chance, being that representation for those people that stopped me on the street were nerveracking and i remember asking my family when i was typing the forward, i typed in 25 minutes and it just poured out of me and i remember thinking is this smart . And i showed it to my husband and i said this is professional suicide, right . He said yeah, probably. And i was like, right but he said maybe and i did it anyway. You see . Lean in. I felt like my goodness, again, economic crisis, National Debate over policing. People of color affected more by this crisis. And i dont have the courage to bring up what i talk about every day on the show . Im in a privileged position. I would be a hypocrite. There you go, girl. And i can so relate to you because you remember when i came out, do you remember how hard that was . We talked about. I thought i was going to lose my job and i said im never going to work with the students again and it was the total right thing to do. You were, i was i always tell people to walkin their own truth , so youre living in your owntruth. Is that where that name comes from, i am these truths . I came up with the title of t book and iin my office now, my home officet my desk where i do all the writing and i have all these things on it d i ha all these books from the constitution. I used to keep copy of theconstitution on desk. It says we hold these truths to be selfevident, that allmen are created equal. And i just started thinking about all the themes in thebook about ecology. And systemic racism and pay inequity and i was like you know, im telling the truth. And these are my truths and i hope its not these people are not ashamed of where they come from and i was like wow, i am these truths. Thats where it came from because it was very powerful. To say that the truth of it all is that we are equal. And that we hold the power to be the difference. You are, thats when people of color, immigrants. You are the american story. So what if someone tries otherwise people of color. Its doubly insulting because of the work that people of color did, no pay , slavery, all those things, and so when people tryotherwise you and make you feel like youre not american , is that infuriating for you . Its painful. It used to make me angry but now its painful. And one of the best things that i thought about when i was writing the book , like, why do people still question my background . My ethnicity. Why is it so odd. We had just come when i was writing we had just come up after just come up again, we had introduced family on the show. And it was a spanishspeaking family. As one of the family members, the grandmother can speak english but i conducted the interview with her in spanish and i would translate for the audience. These are noxious weeds, i thought must be spanish today. Hes speaking with a spanish accent and it was just that i was mispronouncing words properly and i realized that my parents got married in 1968, just a year after e desion when interracial covers will allow to be married and my mother, my mom don, shes a white hispanic and of jish descent. And my fathers black guy. So when they got mried, they had justecome legal and i was like a unicorn, there were not people who look le me so people, i write about in the book how the tribe to go to geora which was crazy and the kkk ran out of town so f me i had been on therise my entire life. Even though im almos30 and in the 50s, there was just unusual so i think tt is why ive lived that life of a struggle of intity. But its saddens me that 50 years later, ople still question it. Because they still want to put you in this box. People have to be able to categorize nothing. To be comfortable. I can understand that a little bit but not as much as you because i wrote about in my book and i talk about the experience in louisiana with the brown per bag. The winter, i was light skin. In the summer i was da. It was just this weird color thing but i remember whene had the conversation about, don, you realize people cnn, they dont know that im latino. Theyust think in terms of africanerican most of t country is africanamerican or blackandwhite area i said sunny, let peopleknow that your recogniz. You did you feel stuck in that world . That no mans land, and best, am i that . Do i have to choose one . For a lot of reasons and it was weird because i work for cnn s annual so they didnt ask me to do any reporting on race. And i think one of the reasons i wre about also in the book, one of the reasons and i blame myself because i changed my name. My real name is kim. Did you more to make it more american or cuban . Tell me about it. The story is ive always been pension. My friends from back in the day called me ascension and when i was in college there were a couple of people that would say no, and i noticed it so i would say you can call me whatever you want and id say okay, fine. So they called me sunshine. When i started doing court tv , it was a great friend of mine. She could not pronounce my name and when i say could not, this struggle was real. She would be like our coast today is. [inaudible]. You can stop and atne of the race she said can i Say Something to you and she said what do you have to say, i said this name thing, its pension. I cant say it. And i said well, what would you like me to say about my name. She said you have anythi and i felthe pressure at that point and i had this legalegend. Teing me, this name is not. So when a lot of people call me sonny, right then she said sunny, she put that they are, i didnt even have to sell her. Teaching and i just went wi you. I didnt like it but after that, my career, took off. She knows tv. Sometimes sunny, maybe rightfully so sometimes people get offended but sometimes you just are looking out for your wellbeing and they know that she was like this will work for you because i know tv. So you just have to roll with it and yes. Thats what she told me, she told me and i write about that in the book, she told me that. She said youre going to make in this business. I have not seen anyone do this as well as you, you can make it through this area that name is going to hold you back, people cant remember and youve got to tell you she was right. I felt like i sold a piece of myself, my grandmother never gave me for it because i was named after her sister. People were sort of patting me and saying hi sunny and she would be like hockey. And i do think that at cnn, if i were just saying like soledad obrien, people would have known my identity. So i kind of did that to myself. And if i had to do itagain i wouldnt change my name. You wouldnt have . I would not have. I know, i would not have. And i look back now, Everybody Knows me now. My first when i was a reporter, she wanted me to change myname, she didnt like the last name lemmon. And i knew in tv if its snappy something that people can remember its great. And i go don lemon, thats a name that people change their names too. You dont want to be like don clark, don johns. Something really simple. No one will ever remember that. Everyone remembers don lemon, everyone remembers honey. But i want to ask you this because you talked about you were to light skin for the black community, to darkened peopledidnt get. F scott fitzgerald, i want to ask you about th. He wrote an essay called the crackup, the test of first rate intelligence is the ability to oppose ideas in mind at the same time. Why do you tnk it so hard for people, even intelligent people youvworked with in the past understand someone can be black and latino . Its fascining, isnt it . The prident is half black and half white but nobodys able to reconcile that. I think a lot of it has todo with the history of this country. The one drop rule where if you we one drop black you wereconsidered black. And i think, i remember growing up can we talk about that . You could be 99. 9 percent Something Else but if you had just a smidgen black in you, you were black. And because of that history in the country, legal documents reflect that and you know, race is just a social construct anyway but my Life Experience reflected that and so on my birth certificate it says black and it also says hispanic which is interesting because i looked back at and it says mother, white and then its interesting. But when you would show on any standardized test you have to choose black, white or hispanic. And i would sometimes try to choose everything. Of course you did. Reject the form. And i think again, it just goes back to the history of our country and the way people are indoctrinated to this day. And i remember feeling if i choose one, does that mean my mother doesnt exist . We can go out and drink our bourbon later and unfortunately i think that that kind of respect for difference of opinion is gone and its just gone and it requires this kind of relationship that we have done and requires a respect for a difference of opinion. A level of forgiveness and being curious rather than judgmental. Definitely requires intellectual curiosity and a lot of people unfortunately dont have that and they certainly dont have a respect of four difference of opinion and we talk about intellectual curiosity what that means in my view is why is this person saying that what has ledhis person to say that and do i see value in that there is always value in a different opinion and how that person adapt to it and its only for you to strengthen your feelings abo the opposite opinion and is only to make y do that and feel that way. For some reason we cant do that anyme. I was pointing to the relationship thatustice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and i and justice scalia. You rea their opinions and some of their desceents and you would think they hated each other. That was hard for me because i ow curiosity but sometimes im like okay, they are makin making they went out t lunch together every friday and they would correspond with each other and they didnt resent anything. I should have i left out a ry important part that your dad also had to change his name in here you are in the 2000s having to change her name. Did you talk to him about that . Yeah, he did. I write about that and he did it we call it code switching and theres all these you know what is weird you talk to people in one way and you talk that way but after a while you get to a certain position and it all becomes one thing and you just do it like it is much more natural now and if you dont, i find it now it doesnt surprise people and i told chris the other night are you stupid and i know its not proper english but thats how we talk to each other. Sorry. No, [inaudible] my father when my parents were coming up again it is now the early 70s and this interracial couple was trying to get an apartment in manhattan trying to get out of the south bronx in my school cant teach me properly and ive seen and weve got to get out of the projects so they start trying to introduce together for apartments and the minute they try to show up the apartment is no longer available and what my mother realizes is her maiden name was [inaudible] so she realizes if i change rosa to rose and my father names was coming so if i became Rose Cummings and i show up with my light hair and my light eyes im going to get the apartment but my father realizes when he sends his resume out as an it guy it is William Moses cummings there ar