Support for this podcast comes from WISE, the account that lets you spend and receive money internationally.

50 currencies, 170 countries, one account designed to take on the world.

So whether you're taking on Rio or Rome, Miami or Mumbai, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate when you convert currencies, with no markups and no hidden fees.

WISE helps you save money no matter where you're going next.

Join 15 million people in businesses who are going global with WISE.

Learn how the WISE account could work for you by downloading the app or visiting WISE.com slash Latino.

Hello dear listener. Today is like any other day. We would normally be bringing you a new episode of Latino USA.

Today is a very very very special day for me because today, September 15th, is the official launch of my new book.

It's called Once I Was You, a Memoir of Love and Hate in a Tour in America.

I've been working on the book for a couple of years now and I'm really excited and a little scared to share it with everybody.

The first official interview of all interviews before the book came out was with the fabulous Lourdes Garcia Navarro from Week in Edition at NPR.

And we're going to bring you an extended version of that interview.

Lulu was just an amazing interviewer and we wanted to share this with you.

So today, a conversation between myself and Lulu Garcia Navarro about my new book, Once I Was You, a Memoir of Love and Hate in a Tour in America.

On Latino USA, enjoy and gracias.

The one and only Maria, you know, Jose joins me now. Welcome.

Hola Lulu. It's great to be with you.

It's such a pleasure. It is such a pleasure to have you on and to read this book.

It's called Once I Was You and it is based around the story of how you came to the United States for the first time. Tell us that story.

Yeah, well, it's an interesting story. I didn't actually know it. Like a lot of us, we don't actually ask our parents. So how exactly did I, you know, you know that you came, like for example, my whole family, we were born in Mexico.

My dad in Tampico, the rest of us in Mexico City and dad gets hired by the University of Chicago. He's a medical doctor dedicated to research.

Long story short, he helps to create the cochlear implant. He was an amazing human being.

...