As the rhetoric around immigration grows heated and whole groups of people are reduced to unhelpful stereotypes, stories arise reminding us that real human beings — individuals and families — are the subjects of this discourse. More than 11 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S., and many of them have citizen children with highly precarious fates.
Diane Guerrero was one of these children. Her heartbreaking and frustrating story is captured in her new memoir, . Guerrero, best known for her roles on the award-winning series Jane the Virgin and Orange is the New Black, was just fourteen when she came home from an audition for a performing-arts high school to find her parents had been detained. They were then deported to Colombia, while the U.S.-born Guerrero remained, trying to rebuild her shattered life.
Narrating her own audiobook proved to be a whole new experience for the actress, from surprise chapped lips to surprise emotions. She gave the following interview from the Audible studios (transcript below):
Diane Guerrero: The writing process was difficult. It’s not easy writing a book. I mean, obviously I’m not a writer, that’s not what I do, but I really didn’t think it was going to be that difficult. But writing a book is hard, y’all! It’s not easy, and it’s certainly not easy writing about yourself and putting everything out there. So there were times where I would be happy with a draft or I would be happy with a certain story that I was writing, and I would feel fine about it one day, and then the next day I would read it and I would go completely crazy and just say, “No! I can’t show this. It’s not done, it’s not ready.” And so the book is done and then you get to do the audio for it, and you feel like it’s a done deal, but it’s not, you know.
Narrating your book = not so easy
Doing the audio for the book wasn’t as easy as I thought, but I had some great guidance and I had a lot of fun with it. And a lot of different things come up, too, when you’re reading this story. You are kind of surprised by the stories again, reading it aloud and trying to tell the story to the listener in a different way. Now they’re not reading it, now it’s not just about the words, it’s about how your inflections or the way you’re presenting the material, vocally. Does that make sense?
Even when you’ve done voice work before
I’m a singer, as well as an actor, and so I did have … I did some voiceover work. I’ve done it a couple times and I really do enjoy it. I really do like it. The most memorable one is, I did an episode of , and I was a fairy. So I had to have my little kid voice, my fairy voice, and I had to sing in a way that would be pleasant for a three-year-old or four-year-old. And that experience was awesome and so I learned a little bit there, but this experience was totally new for me.
