1장
From Outsider to Storyteller: Soledad O'Brien's Journey
The night sky in Patagonia unfolds before me as our small car climbs toward Chile. Diverted from Haiti to cover an earthquake, I've flown through multiple cities in twenty-four hours, following that magnetic pull journalists feel toward unfolding crises. The enormous white moon rises like a beacon, guiding travelers through darkness. This is the rhythm of my life-witnessing both beauty and devastation, documenting humanity in crisis, and following stories wherever they lead.
My career as a journalist gives me unique opportunities to witness people at their worst and best moments. In disaster zones worldwide-Thailand, New Orleans, Port-au-Prince-I've observed the same pattern: bad things happen until good people intervene. This truth echoes what I learned growing up as a mixed-race child in predominantly white Smithtown, Long Island. My immigrant parents-my Australian father and Cuban mother-ensured I had opportunities despite sometimes being treated as "a creature of bad circumstance." Their determination left me driven to document how people get their chance at life and whether they share their good fortune with others.
The contrasts I witness are stark-looters stealing phones while volunteers work through the night rescuing strangers. You can choose to be a looter or a lifeline; this fundamental choice is often what I report. Through it all, I remember that beautiful moon that draws me home and then out again to the next assignment, the next story that needs telling.
2장
The Photographer's Question: Confronting Identity
When I was eleven, my sister Estela and I visited a photographer's studio in Smithtown for a portrait to give our parents. The photographer asked, "Forgive me if I'm offending you, but are you black?" His polite-sounding words crushed my confidence. Why would being black be offensive? I am black, also Latina, and half white through my Australian father.
This moment began my life of perpetual motion-walking away from uncomfortable comments and stares rather than confronting them. There was the store owner who explained I couldn't be black because "black people were thieves and killers." There was the eighth-grader who asked, "If you're a nigger why don't you have big lips?" I'd simply walk away, refusing to dignify such ignorance with a response.
Now, after decades as a journalist, I'm still that Smithtown girl but walking toward something rather than away. I force people to consider their words in interviews. I dig into awkward questions that need answers. I graduated with honors from that same school system, went to Harvard like all my siblings, produce award-winning documentaries about race, and have built a successful career and family. That eighth-grader didn't hinder my forward motion one bit.
These experiences changed me for the better. I learned I didn't need to confront every injustice-I could win by moving forward. Anger could motivate me without festering into bitterness. My experiences help my journalism because I can identify with people unlike myself. One certainty in America is that not far from every ugly thing is something beautiful. If you stop at every bitter comment, you'll never reach your destination.
3장
The Unlikely Marriage: Building a Family Against Odds
My parents initiated this life strategy long before I arrived. My father, Edward "Ted" O'Brien, fled rural Toowoomba, Australia, where his family wanted him working in their mill as a chemical engineer. My mother, Estela Lucrecia Marquetti y Mendieta, left Cuba at fourteen-poor, black, and seeking education with the Oblate Sisters in Baltimore.
Dad had a rugby player's build, mischievous smile, and ivory skin. Mom's skin was coconut-shell brown with bright eyes and shiny black hair. They met at Johns Hopkins when Dad offered Mom a ride to mass. Dating meant traveling from place to place seeking establishments willing to serve an interracial couple in 1958 Baltimore. When they decided to marry in 1959, their church refused-interracial marriage wasn't legal in Maryland. Rather than become a test case, they drove to Washington D.C. where it was legal, married, and returned to Maryland.
They took a significant risk-just a year earlier, another interracial couple had been arrested in Virginia after marrying in D.C. By the time the Supreme Court overturned interracial marriage bans in 1967's Loving v. Virginia, my parents had been married nearly ten years and were raising six children in Smithtown. Mom's philosophy was simple: "You have to keep going in life, live every day and then the next." Smithtown represented their forward motion-a well-off, white North Shore suburb embodying why immigrants come to America. The beautiful thing about this country is that its past and principles belong to everyone who comes here-I'm as American as anyone who questioned my belonging.
4장
Finding Our Place: Growing Up Different in Smithtown
Smithtown, with its blue-green bull statue named Whisper at a key intersection, was our slice of storybook America. The schools bore Native American names like Nesaquake, my junior high, where I was once asked about having thick lips. Though we were late arrivals to this history, my parents chose Smithtown as our outpost in this land of possibilities-Smith, the Dutch, the natives, even Whisper the muscular bull now belonged to us too.
I grew up unaware of my parents' political choices in moving to Smithtown. They had joined a group of black families pushing for integration and better housing-mostly as a way to meet other black families, since there were so few. My best friend Shevoy Onley was one of the only black kids not related to me. We connected through our difference, catching each other's eyes across classrooms-people looked at us but never really saw us.
Smithtown had a split personality. While I rode horses at white friends' homes and enjoyed suburban comforts, I also experienced moments that revealed its darker side-like when a friend's sister complained about sitting next to "the black girl" at dinner. People assumed all black folks were related, once telling my sister Cecilia they'd seen "your father and brother" changing a tire when it was simply some other black people. When my parents first moved there, white people wouldn't sell homes to blacks-they had to buy land from a liberal philanthropist and build their own house.
The ugliness of Smithtown's racial dynamics only became fully clear to me years later. In 1985, the town began participating in Section 8 housing but required applicants to already be residents-effectively barring minorities from a town already 90% white. By 2007, civil rights lawyers filed a class-action suit against Smithtown on behalf of people like Corinne Vargas, a Latina mother with a disabled daughter who was denied housing simply because she wasn't already a resident.
5장
Family as Fortress: Creating Our Own World
Despite Smithtown's hidden racism, my family thrived there. Dad taught mechanical engineering at the state college while Mom taught Spanish at the local high schools. They were religious, strict, and education-focused-no TV during weekdays and tight control over our activities. "Studying is what children do," my mother insisted, providing "three meals a day and very little TV, like three or four hours only on weekends. That's all there is to it."
We seemed to fit in many ways, though our differences became apparent outside our home. Not everyone ate rice with every meal, sometimes with guava jelly and fried plantains. A 1970s family photo shows all six of us with giant Afros and big smiles, leaning against our VW bus-unmistakably different in Smithtown's landscape. Perhaps that's why my parents encouraged us to be a tight gang of six-we needed one another and became each other's closest friends.
Our evenings involved piling up dinner dishes before retreating to our double-wide hallway playspace. Never allowed out after dinner, we held dance parties with funny gyrations to 45s like "Billy, Don't Be a Hero." The vast lawn and labyrinth of trees around our house became our refuge for endless games of softball, tag, and hide-and-seek.
My four older siblings formed their own protective force at Smithtown High. Mom taught them to stick together, watching out for each other naturally due to their close ages. When a girl tormented Estela in second grade, Maria confronted her with a whispered threat. When a neighbor boy made racist comments on the bus, all four heckled him: "You flunked first grade, you idiot."
Among nearly 2,700 students, the four O'Briens represented over half the Black population. Though lonely in individual classes when teachers made nonsensical claims about Africa or staged inappropriate debates about apartheid, they always reunited in hallways or on the bus ride home.
6장
Harvard and Beyond: Finding My Voice
I begin my Harvard freshman year just before turning eighteen, immediately struck by my classmates' wealth-Saabs and Swiss vacations contrast sharply with my middle-class upbringing. Though I'm the fifth O'Brien to attend Harvard and plan to study medicine like my sister Estela, I don't completely feel I belong.
Being middle-class means working throughout college. I sell women's clothing at Rogers of Harvard Square, handling cashmere sweaters and velvet wraps. I take additional jobs catering, editing scientific abstracts, babysitting, and becoming a certified nurse's aide. I also work at a pharmacy, all steps toward becoming a doctor.
At Harvard, I develop the social life I never had in Smithtown. I join lacrosse, my house's running club, and briefly play rugby until tearing my ACL. Being multiracial suddenly becomes an advantage rather than a liability. College embraces diversity-I can be half-black while still being considered family. The difference that isolated me in high school now makes me "exotic and cute." For the first time, I date widely and learn to slow down.
I learn to choose friends wisely, valuing kindness over pretension. Harvard contains many future status-seekers who believe their admission makes them superior. I maintain my middle-class, immigrant-family perspective. I don't feel special-I recognize I'm here because of strong grades, being female when they needed women, and being a person of color when they wanted diversity.
When I take organic chemistry with my sister Estela, our different approaches become clear. She intuitively understands formulas while I struggle with memorization. This frustrating experience reveals I lack passion for medicine, making me question my career path.
Lost without a clear direction, I carry the weight of family expectations. Junior year, I land an internship at WBZ-TV in Boston. The newsroom's electric atmosphere captivates me instantly. Everyone rushes around assembling the complicated puzzle of a newscast. When I witness anchors broadcasting live to the entire city, I'm intoxicated by the energy and importance. I leverage my premed background to interview with medical reporter Jeanne Blake, who becomes my first journalism mentor.
7장
Breaking Into Television: The Early Years
I abandon my expected path to medical school to work at WBZ-TV for $6 an hour, thriving in the chaotic, fast-paced newsroom environment. Starting at the bottom as a "minority writer trainee," I feel the weight of the question mark hovering over my head-am I here for my race or my skills? I approach each day like a job interview, carefully weighing every word while setting my own bar higher than my bosses expect.
My career begins with fits and starts-moments of brilliance followed by feeling small and irrelevant. After a year, I'm promoted to "Writer/Associate Producer" for the morning show, working brutal 2 a.m. to 2 p.m. shifts. Chronically exhausted, I gulp coffee and occasionally rest my head on my keyboard for catnaps. I watch anchors fill airtime with unscripted questions and think, "I could do that."
I move to New York, the "city on the hill," working at NBC's Rockefeller Center. My SoHo apartment is cockroach-infested with weird dimensions, but I feel I belong in this city of dreamers. On my first day, I ride the elevator with Jane Pauley, barely able to breathe from excitement. I meet Elena Nachmanoff, the "Talent Development" gatekeeper, who suggests I could become an on-air reporter-a thrilling but nauseating prospect.
When Brad Raymond, a Harvard classmate I'd known casually, moves to California in 1992, I suddenly feel his absence. During a work trip to San Francisco, we reconnect, and I realize I've always had feelings for him. Unlike the men I've dated who bore me, Brad is focused, philosophical, and unpretentious. He has Harvard credentials and all-American looks but carries no arrogance. At the end of our date, he suggests I move to California-despite having no job, car, or money there, it somehow makes perfect sense.
I break through glass when KRON offers me a job in San Francisco. Despite the tiny apartment, less money, and early-morning traffic noise, I'm finally going to be on air! I volunteer for overnight fires and work hard, but after two weeks, I completely flub my first live shoot at a Giants playoff game. My boss suggests I quit and try a smaller market. I call Bob Bazell who tells me to stick it out. I review every tape, do five daily news updates, and practice constantly-not naturally talented but willing to outwork everyone.
8장
Finding My Purpose in Oakland
Oakland becomes my new home-America's second-most-diverse city and epicenter of crack cocaine, rap music, and earthquakes. My bosses are amazed I choose to live there, revealing their class-based prejudices when they complain about driving through Oakland. I remind them these are the people I'm covering. Though I check nightly if my TV is still there, I love the cultural chaos and understand I'm covering poverty, inner-city life, and injustices faced by vulnerable people.
I feel trapped covering meth lab explosions and drug busts at KRON, frustrated that we're missing the deeper story about America's approach to addiction. The station prioritizes crime coverage over exploring why police target poor meth cooks while middle-class cocaine users face no consequences. Oakland divides more by class than race, with complex layers among the poor. I'm developing as a reporter but feel limited by the station's approach.
The 1996 Oakland teachers' strike becomes my breakthrough moment as a reporter. For five weeks, I immerse myself in a heartbreaking standoff over teacher salaries and class sizes that paralyzes the city. I bring donuts to both sides, welcome neighborhood kids to my office, and buy them their first-ever books. Living in the community gives me unique insight as parents scramble for childcare and teachers struggle to survive on $30,000 salaries. For the first time, I move beyond headlines to report the nuanced politics behind urban education failure.
In 1996, I cover the shocking case of a six-year-old black boy charged with attempting to murder a Latino infant. The tiny defendant appears in juvenile hall wearing oversized shorts, innocently asking the sketch artist who he's drawing. The boy's life reflects Oakland's social ills-he's repeating kindergarten, his father was murdered when he was four, and his home is described as a "crack den." What haunts me most is how the horror has become normalized in America's poorest communities.
David Bohrman recruits me to anchor "The Site," a tech show for the newly launched MSNBC. Despite knowing little about technology, my enthusiasm and ability to ask viewer-friendly questions impress him. The show goes well until Princess Diana's death shifts MSNBC to rolling news coverage. I push for another position and land the weekend morning newscast "Morning Blend" in New York, with the promise of correspondent work for NBC Nightly News during the week.
9장
Hurricane Katrina: The Breaking Point
My plane descends into Baton Rouge on September 2, 2005, four days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Armed with baby wipes, rain gear, PowerBars and water, I arrive at an airport transformed into a chaotic indoor campground. Evacuees of all backgrounds wander aimlessly with tiny bags of belongings, boarding military planes to unknown destinations. Their eyes are too tired for tears. The scene makes no sense-four days after the storm, there should be organized relief efforts, not this level of chaos and suffering.
When Katrina hit, CNN scrambled to deploy reporting teams. As Jeanne Meserve's harrowing live reports revealed people stranded on rooftops and dogs caught in electrical lines, the disconnect between our coverage and government response became painfully clear. This disaster taught me to count on no one-when people dial 911, help doesn't always come. I admire those New Orleans residents who kept axes in their attics, those who evacuated early despite financial strain.
In New Orleans, I found myself in an unimaginable situation-trying to sound professional on a satellite phone call about my twins' preschool admission while sirens wailed behind me. The disconnect between this devastation and what America should be was overwhelming. In a city nearly 70% African-American, the images of suffering couldn't be separated from issues of race and class. Money determined who could escape and who would rebuild. I struggled to contain my anger on camera as I interviewed people outside the Superdome-black residents humiliated in their own town, not by nature but by their country's failure.
What I learned in New Orleans is that America is a land of individuals, not institutions. While official agencies failed, people like Angela Cole, a public health nurse from upstate New York, drove down to answer the call. These everyday heroes reached forgotten places like Pearlington, Mississippi-a community so remote it barely existed on maps. Angela arrived with supplies when agencies said they couldn't make it there, transforming an abandoned schoolhouse into a clearinghouse for donations.
Among the 100,000 FEMA trailers housing Katrina victims, we discovered a dangerous health crisis. Testing revealed formaldehyde levels more than twice what federal agencies considered safe, leaching from the particleboard construction. Despite dozens of similar findings, FEMA dismissed the problem as a "nuisance" rather than a health hazard.
10장
Black in America: Telling Our Stories
I begin reporting a two-night, four-hour special called Black in America, my first major assignment as anchor of CNN Presents. This documentary work feels overwhelming but exciting-exactly the kind of reporting I've always wanted to do. One of my first stories follows Michael Eric Dyson visiting his brother Everett in prison, highlighting how African-American men represent 40% of the prison population despite being only 14% of the general population. Michael, a Princeton PhD and celebrated intellectual, grew up in the same circumstances as his brother who's serving a life sentence for murder.
Racism has evolved from the concrete boundaries of my childhood-when my mother couldn't marry my dad and places were off-limits-to today's subtler social discrimination. Modern American racism involves opportunities denied rather than access prohibited. Many in the African-American community face a mountain of injustices too high to climb, creating divisions between those who got opportunities and those who were shot down. Historical injustices continue to impact present realities-like how three times more black children drown than white children because generations ago, slaves weren't taught to swim.
Reporting on "Black in America" presents one of my career's greatest challenges-determining whether we're documenting a race or racism, two elements inextricably interwoven in this country. The project's very title creates impossible expectations to cover every black experience in just four hours. My diverse production team struggles with contradictory approaches-some wanting to tackle social issues while others prefer showcasing positive images.
Little Rock Central High School stands as both an impressive academic institution and a chilling reminder of America's racist past. Despite its towering facade and academic achievements, I can't visit without feeling the weight of history-when federal troops had to escort nine frightened black teenagers to class against angry white racists. I follow graduates from the class of 1968 to see what average men accomplished with that heavy historical burden on their shoulders.
I hear about anger from many young black men I interview-anger that crosses class and education lines, shaped by fear as much as temper. Professor Mincy explains that damage from absent fathers lasts generations, harming the entire African-American community as single motherhood becomes normalized. He traces obstacles facing black men from slavery through high dropout rates, unemployment, and incarceration: "It is very difficult for a man to marry, to sustain a family... if he can't fulfill the provider roles."
11장
Haiti's Heartbreak: Witnessing Disaster
On January 12, 2010, just one day after my new In America unit is staffed, everything changes when a 7.0 magnitude earthquake strikes fifteen miles west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti. The newsroom erupts with activity as we realize this will be catastrophic-Haiti's poverty, fractured government, and poor infrastructure mean massive casualties. CNN immediately mobilizes to get Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta into the disaster zone.
Flying over Port-au-Prince, I'm stunned into silence. The city looks completely flattened, covered in concrete dust. People move like zombies through the rubble. Tarps cover mysterious mounds. The glare from upturned concrete is blinding. The devastation is so overwhelming I struggle to process what I'm seeing-I don't want to look, but I can't look away.
Landing at the Dominican embassy's private pad, we're met by CNN security guards prepared for riots and violence. But the people aren't angry-they're shattered, exhausted, searching rubble for survivors or simply looking for water. CNN has transformed the old Holiday Inn into a makeshift headquarters with satellite equipment, generators, and supplies.
I visit Haiti's orphanages where desperate parents drop off children they can't afford to raise. At Maison des Enfants de Dieu, I find twenty-five babies under a year old lying on cardboard in a truck, fed water and powdered milk because formula has run out. One child erupts with diarrhea, another gags in the heat. These babies will quickly dehydrate and face illness without immediate help.
I meet Jonathan Olinger, a young filmmaker with a heart condition who founded Discover the Journey to document children in need worldwide. In Haiti, he's been filming at Maison de Lumiere (the Lighthouse), an orphanage run by the Manasseros. This American family moved to Haiti after their nine-year-old daughter Ariana's concern for Haitian children prompted a visit that revealed shocking poverty and child trafficking. They sold everything and relocated, building boys' and girls' orphanages, a feeding program, clinic, and guesthouse for volunteers.
12장
The Power of Individual Action
At the Lighthouse, I meet Cendy, a shy girl with haunting eyes and shaved hair who was abandoned by her parents at age two. She constantly hides from our cameras, playing hide-and-seek even when given her own flip cam. Ariana Manassero, Bill and Susette's insightful teenage daughter, explains that Cendy suffers from profound loneliness, having no single adult truly responsible for her. Their approach is simple but powerful: shower her with overwhelming love daily so she recognizes what it feels like and it grows within her.
Mark Kenson Olibris, now the guesthouse caretaker, maintains a calm demeanor despite the stress. With his bright eyes and wide smile, he appears perpetually happy despite his tragic past. He reveals he was sold as a restavec (child slave) by his impoverished parents for just twelve dollars. Remarkably, he harbors no anger toward them, understanding they had nothing to give him and believed selling him might lead to a better life in Port-au-Prince or possible adoption to America.
Instead of abandoning their mission after security threats, Susette and Bill open a school-a remarkable act of faith when half of Haiti's children never see classrooms and the earthquake destroyed three-quarters of existing schools. Ariana takes Cendy to her first class with the serious Mr. Lavinsky, who begins teaching her to read despite his belief that Haiti will never recover.
I return to Haiti in mid-June with my nine-year-old daughter Sofia, seeing it as an opportunity to teach her that one person can change the world by changing just a piece of it. At the Lighthouse orphanage, Sofia connects with the children, especially Cendy, who transforms from the shy, withdrawn girl I first met into a dancing, smiling child in a lavender dress with new braids.
I rarely visit Smithtown, Long Island, where I grew up as one of six black children in a predominantly white community. Driving along the Long Island Expressway, I pass through Patchogue, where a recent hate crime resulted in the murder of an Ecuadorian immigrant by teenagers who went "beaner hopping." The tension around immigration in these towns feels like my next big story to tackle.
Returning to my childhood home, which remains unchanged since I left for college, I reflect on the opportunities I was given that others never had. The vast green land, sheltering trees, and quiet streets remind me of my privileged upbringing.
I recognize my responsibility to give back because of these advantages. "I can't change the entire world, but I can work on my little piece of it." My commitment is to amplify unheard voices, to investigate beneath surface appearances, and to bear witness to struggles others might ignore. My family's journey to "seize the promise of America" has given me both opportunity and obligation. Life is sometimes about what's possible-and making the impossible possible for others.
