Memoir: Diane Guerrero shares her family’s separation heartache to take on immigration policy
By hola | Published | No Comments
Diane Guerrero grew up knowing she had to keep her mouth shut. As a child of undocumented parents any misstep that could draw attention was the last thing her family needed.
“Like everyone else in our secret network, we followed the First Commandment of life under the radar: Do nothing that might bring the cops to your doorstep,” says Guerrero in her memoir “In the County We Love: My Family Divided.”
But even after years of remaining careful, at age 14, Guerrero returns home from school to find her worst fear a reality. With the light still on in their kitchen, sliced plantains resting on a countertop and uncooked rice on the stove, her parents were forced from their home, arrested and deported—never to return to the United States.
“The summer I lost my parents, it was the strangest kind of heartache. No friends gathered to grieve over the departed. No flowers were sent. No memorial service was planned. And yet the two people I’d cherished most were gone,” Guerrero writes.
Her memoir focuses on that life-changing moment, along with her growing success as an actress. She plays sassy prison inmate Maritza Ramos in the popular Netflix series Orange is the New Black and has a recurring role on the TV show Jane the Virgin.
While actors aren’t necessarily like the characters they portray, watching Guerrero onscreen one would never guess the adversity she’s faced to raise herself and reach success in acting. Since her early teens, the actress depended on the kindness of family friends, bouncing from home to home until she began landing steady acting roles. Guerrero also reveals her struggles with learning disorders and mental health issues.
The book also manages to make me ask a question many of us may not have thought about: What happens to children when their parents are deported? I’ve heard the term “anchor baby” tossed around. Guerrero’s story sets aside any ideas brought up by talk of birthright citizenship, border walls and the like. Instead her story brings to life the sad reality of families separated by deportation. More than 70,000 parents of US-born children were deported in 2013 alone, according to the Department of Homeland Security. A recent Migration Policy Institute report notes approximately 5.3 million children are living with unauthorized parents. The implication: Each of those children may have dealt with their own heartache brought on by their parents’ deportation.
In sharing her story, Guerrero says she hopes children in similar straits today will read the book and know they are not alone. She also hopes to shine a light on U.S. immigration policy, using the language and phrases commonly spoken by her generation. Guerrero, 29, both makes light of her situation and highlights the difficulties of coming to age without the guidance of parents.
“Let’s just say Sallie Mae (a student loan provider) and I have had words over the years,” she shares.
“Fear,” she also remarks, “is what kept me from applying to a conservatory. And fear was dogging the dream I claimed to no longer want—#selfsabotage,” she writes of the years before she discovered how spending so much time avoiding attention was keeping her from realizing her goals.
Although she grew up under the radar, Guerrero now seeks the spotlight and hopes to represent all of the possibilities available to people in the United States.
“My story represents all that should be celebrated about America. Only here could the daughter of immigrants grow up to succeed in the competitive and exciting world of acting,” says the actress. “I still don’t comprehend all the ways my life has turned out the way it has, but that’s no longer the central question for me. What matters more is how I can turn the trauma of my experience into some kind of meaningful change for myself and others.”
—Tatiana Delgado-Prather
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