Connie Chung broke the glass and bamboo ceiling when she became the first Asian American woman to co-anchor a national news broadcast program, joining Dan Rather at the desk of the CBS Evening News. Her visibility and success led generations of Chinese parents to name their daughters Connie. In her briskly paced memoir, Connie, Chung recounts her personal and professional life with candor, humor and heart.
Growing up as the youngest of 10 daughters and the only child in the family born in the U.S., Chung spent more time watching television than doing chores, and her family stopped everything to listen to Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News. The legendary newsman’s coverage of politics and government lit a spark in Chung. In 1971, she landed a job as a Washington correspondent on his program. (Cronkite, she writes, “radiated gravitas and humility, never behaving like the superstar he was.”) Over the next 40 years, Chung embraced the excitement of “getting the get”—landing an exclusive story or interview—and faced the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated profession. Connie carries readers through the ups and downs of Chung’s career as the major networks (ABC, NBC and CBS) piped her image and voice into millions of American living rooms during prime time. Readers will glimpse the relationships that have sustained Chung; she gushes about her husband, talk show host Maury Povich: “Were it not for Maury, I could never have had the career I had. . . . He helped me navigate my treacherous path up the ladder.”
Chung pulls no punches as she describes the harassment she faced from anchors who felt threatened by her work, among them Dan Rather, who sabotaged her career after the network sent her to cover the Oklahoma City bombing (Rather was on vacation and unreachable when it occurred). And she movingly recounts going public during the #MeToo movement with the story of her own sexual assault by a gynecologist when she was in college. Connie offers words of advice for future women reporters: “Remember to have a sense of humor, take your work seriously, don’t forget to have a life and—most importantly—stretch your hand to others who are trying to climb on board.” Chung’s humanity and journalistic passion reverberate through this invigorating memoir.
