Originally this was goung to be a review but how can you review a memoir. They’re personal, and heartfelt and also helpfully co-written so they’re usually articulated and well-structured.

In Diane Guerrero’s case, her story reveals a story that many Americans deal with, being part of an undocumented and fearing deportation. Guerroro was born in the U.S. so she was safe but her parents and her older brother were not. At the age of fourteen, her worst fears came true. She arrived home from school to find an empty house.

She describes how the situation took a toll not only of family relationships but her own health as she had to learn to care for herself when she was only a teenager. Sure, she had a kind friend whose family took her in but she was all too aware that she was just a guest. She could not lean on them for support like she could with her parents.

Guerroro is open about all of this even getting deep into her own insecurities and meltdowns that come from trying to hold things together by herself. She also talks about her estrangement with her mother that colored most of their relationship since the deporation. But it is not all gloom as she details how she was able to pick herself up with therapy and soon achieve her goal to become an actress after feeling so aimless.

But the most important part of the book is that this is just one story. Not only does it offer resources about immigration so one can research more but you can understand Guerroero’s genuine dedication to shedding a light on the families of undocumented immigrants. There should be more priority to giving them a chance to achieve citizenship without going through the endless trails of bureacratic red tape, financial burden and familial separation. As she stated multiple times, we need to have compassion for those immigrant families who take on some of the hardest, least prestigious jobs but still deserve not to fear their family being split apart or being abandoned.

When her parents were deported, she was practically considered invisible, there were no Child Services or foster people there to pick her up after they deported her parents. There was no check-up, they practically orphaned a girl but there was no concern which goes to show how America’s immigration policies have really screwed up priorities.