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It's an uncharacteristically warm, sunny day in mid-May —for New York City— when I meet Diane Guerrero. She is early and already seated at the lobby bar of The New York EDITION Hotel with a silver pot of tea when I arrive. The 31-year-old actress is donning a Baywatch-red one-piece swimsuit (I find this out as she removes her jacket and warns me, with a smile, "This is not the look.") paired with black, white-striped track pants. Her face is free of makeup (she just had a facial) and her chin-length locks are styled in a deep side part. An unquestionable natural beauty, I remember the part in her 2016 book, "In the Country We Love: My Family Divided," (which I'd finished reading the night before our interview) where a studio manager tells her, "I don't know if you're pretty enough for this business" and think to myself, Well, she couldn't be more wrong. The New Jersey-born artist, who normally splits her time between Los Angeles and New York, has been on the east coast for a month now. "I've been traveling. I always think that I'm going to do my last book tour. This is the last month or this is the last school I'm going to visit and it always does not turn out that way, which is actually great for me," she says with a smile, adding that she's happy to have the work. "In the Country We Love" –which will be released in a young adult version titled, "My Family Divided: One Girl's Journey of Home, Loss, and Hope" on July 17th —chronicles Diane's life leading up to and after her parents and older brother were deported to Colombia when she was only 14 years old. The idea for the book came about af ter her op -ed, "My Parents Were Depor ted" was published in the Los Angeles Times in 2014. "I had no idea that it was going to catch peoples' at tention the way it did, and that just made me realize the dire need for this stor y to be out there." Though Diane always thought she would eventually tell her stor y, she was not prepared to share something so personal this early in her life. On top of that, her plate was pret t y full with her recurring-charac ter roles on Net flix's multi-award-winning series, Orange is the New Black and on The C W 's hit T V show, Jane the Virgin, and her quest to find stable work. But once the calls from publishers and book agents came pouring in, she knew she could not pass up this incredible oppor tunit y, and made the pivotal decision to share her ver y personal experience so that others dealing with immigration situations like hers could identif y and be inspired by her stor y. Given the polarizing subject matter, Diane expected negative feedback, but the positive responses she continues to receive after visiting myriad universities and via social media far outweigh the bad. "Sometimes you get some racist comment here and there, but at the same time, it lets me know how much more I need to be doing this and how many more people need to be part of the conversation." It has become her mission to highlight that the immigration system is broken. "There is no back of the line that you can go to. No, there is no path for citizenship. It's extremely unbalanced. The visa system is outdated and the system is essentially biased. And I am really simply just sharing my story… If America is the country it says it is, then it needs it live up to that. You value family, the home, and human lives? Then you should act like it… If enough people participate, maybe we can change some minds and actually make a difference in Washington and finally reach some reform and some relief." Red Ali Cropped Top - A.L.C. Red Oman Pant - Rag & Bone Rainbow Hoop Earring - Vintage