Where I’m From

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KUT’s award-winning news team has partnered with Texas Monthly to produce “Where I’m From,” a one-hour special featuring famous and not-so-famous Texans sharing their thoughts on how where you come from defines who you are.

Produced by KUT News Director Emily Donahue, the special is hosted by Texas Monthly’s Jake Silverstein.

Some of the Texans interviewed include: former first lady Laura Bush, musician David Lee Garza, and writers Roger Hodge, Bryan Burrough, Shelby Hearon and John Phillip Santos.

“We believe this project will provide audiences with delightful, yet thought-provoking, intelligent listening that will help us fulfill public radio’s commitment to engage citizens in considering who we are, where we’re going and how we’ll get there as a community and a state,” said Donahue.

“Where I’m From” won 1st place for Division A radio documentary from the 2010 Texas Associated Press Broadcasters Awards.

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Where I’m From

Dreaming of My Real Home

“What have I learned while living in New Jersey for more than a decade?” he writes in the June issue of Texas Monthly “That I want to die with my boots on back in Texas.” In this special essay produced by KUT, Burrough says although he’s been away from Texas for 25 years, he’ll never...
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I’m a Fronterizo: I’m From Both Sides of the Border

Romo’s family lived in El Paso, Texas and Juarez, Mexico. Neither English nor Spanish was his first language. He says, “speaking only one language at the border was like using only one eye.” You can read David Romo’s essay about his home in the special June issue of Texas Monthly. You...
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The Urban Cowboy

“People still express shock when I tell them where I’m from,” Hodge writes in the June issue of Texas Monthly “For Texas to New Yorkers and other lifelong city dwellers is a magical place, full of the mystery that attends sites of epic violence and heroic struggle.” In this special essay...
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If These Walls Could Speak…

“I have had a relationship with that house, on its sloping acre of the Balcones fault line, now for nearly half a century,” Crook writes in the June issue of Texas Monthly. “I took my husband there on our first date and later married him there. I was introduced to Lyndon Johnson in the dining...
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Walking the Ground

Hearon writes in the June issue of Texas Monthly, “I left Texas in 1981, but my thoughts-and my writing- will forever roam across its arid sand, rutted creek beds, and native prairie grasses.” In this special essay produced by KUT, Hearon talks about how she feels like she is the ground she...
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Deep in the Heart of Texas

“I arrived at UT as just another clueless freshman from the provinces. More than forty years later, I’m happy to say that I, my friends, and the place we call home have all grown up,” Harrigan writes in the June issue of Texas Monthly. “But not so much that we can’t still appreciate that...
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How Texas Shaped Me

Texas has a way of imprinting itself on the souls of the people who live here....
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A Town Called Utopia

A new book takes you inside small-town Texas, where cowboys and farmers still hang out on Main Street....
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Patient Curiosity

“I had a perfectly normal childhood in Wichita Falls, a place Advertising Age once called the most average city in America. But I didn’t truly understand where I was from until I stepped inside the gates of the local state hospital and realized that every town has another side,” Hollandsworth...
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My Own Myth of Texas

“My hometown is a modest community on the banks of the Neches River,” Carter writes in the special June issue of Texas Monthly, “But as I first discovered as a boy playing in the Big Thicket, and later as a photographer, Beaumont is no ordinary place.” Carter describes the magic he sees in...
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The End of Childhood

“In 1987 I left Texas to spend the summer working at Disney World, selling taco salads to tourists at Frontierland. I was lonely and homesick and thought things couldn’t get any worse. Then the unthinkable happened,” Guerra writes in the June issue of Texas Monthly....
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“Soy Tejano”

In Texas Monthly’s special June issue Garza writes: “Though nearby San Antonio has always loomed large in my imagination, I’ve never left Poteet, the small town that made me the man-and the musician-I am.” Garza reminisces on his musical upbringing and his father’s influence in this essay...
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A Secret Mexican City

In this essay produced by KUT, in partnership with Texas Monthly for their special June issue, Santos explains how in the late 60s San Antonio came out of its “sheltered existence” Get ready for more stories with a Texas twist during Where I’m From, airing June 4th at 3 p.m. on KUT 90.5 FM....
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Back Home in Texas

In her new memoir, and in Texas Monthly’s special June issue, Mrs. Bush writes, “It was a tragic, terrible, terrible accident that did, in many ways, bring to an end that feeling of security that I’d had before that.” In this conversation with Texas Monthly’s editor, Jake Silverstein,...
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Where I’m From

Dreaming of My Real Home

I’m a Fronterizo: I’m From Both Sides of the Border

The Urban Cowboy

If These Walls Could Speak…

Walking the Ground

Deep in the Heart of Texas

How Texas Shaped Me

A Town Called Utopia

Patient Curiosity

My Own Myth of Texas

The End of Childhood

“Soy Tejano”

A Secret Mexican City

Back Home in Texas

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