Afro-Latina Writer Natalie Guerrero Centers Ambition & Grief in Debut Novel

Natalie Guerrero is an LA-based Afro-Latina author and producer of Dominican and Puerto Rican descent who explores womanhood, ambition, power imbalance, and late coming-of-age in her work. In July, she published her debut novel My Train Leaves at Three, which follows Xiomara, an Afro-Latina singer and actress born and raised in Washington Heights whose entire life falls apart after her sister Nena’s sudden and tragic death. Now reaching her 30s, Xiomara is still living in a tiny apartment with her ultra-Catholic Puerto Rican mother, working two minimum-wage jobs, and engaging in meaningless sex with a string of men. But when she gets an opportunity to audition for up-and-coming director Manny Santos, it finally feels like a chance to pursue the dream she thought she’d left behind. But nothing is that simple and soon she finds herself facing the ugliest sides of the industry and the powerful men that control it, forced to ask herself if she has what it takes to build a new life without losing the truth of her old one.

“When they read the book, I want Latina women to know this larger lesson of how entitled we are to our dreams,” Guerrero tells HipLatina. “That’s something that I feel very passionate about because I think often times we’re put in positions where we have a lot of responsibility toward our family and we’re the products of immigrants who came to this country and gave up everything for us, like my dad. We’re entitled to pursuing whatever dream we had that we weren’t able to live out fully, regardless of the responsibilities that are put on us or that we have. I don’t necessarily believe in American individualism because what I love so much about my culture is that we take care of each other. But I also think there has to be a balance. It’s okay to be self-indulgent. It’s okay to ask questions and learn about yourself.”

Guerrero initially started out her creative career as a child actor when she was around nine years old. One of her first roles was playing Young Nala in the 1997 Broadway production of Disney’sThe Lion King. However, she soon realized that finding success at such an early age took much of the fun and enjoyment out of what was supposed to be a dream come true and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She quickly grew bored, refusing to go to auditions her agent recommended her for and feeling stagnant in the creative process of acting. It didn’t help that when she turned 13, the musical director informed her that she wouldn’t be contracted to continue performing in the show because she’d grown “too tall” and “taller than Simba” by two inches. The trauma and hurt of feeling like she needed to shrink who she was becoming in an industry that relied on appearance perhaps more than talent would become an important theme in Xiomara’s story.

After all, Xiomara walks through the world as an Afro-Latina entertainer, which creates conflict in an industry known to uphold Eurocentric beauty standards and favor the status quo. With Xiomara, who is of multiple marginalized identities: Black, Latina, and a woman, she has the odds stacked against her. Her body, compared to other actresses’, is victimized and objectified more easily than the other women she works with at a diner and her fellow co-stars on stage. And though she has ambition and clear passion for her craft, the book shows how that’s often secondary to the whims and desires of men in power who not only run the business side of theater, but also the creative one. We see how Manny Santos, the director of a hot new theatrical production, wields absolute control over the audition room and the toxicity in every one of his interactions with Xiomara, however clear it is that she too enjoys meaningless, toxic relationships. It’s up to her, over the course of the novel, to decide what boundaries she’s willing to set for herself to fulfill her dreams versus what she’ll sacrifice to get it.

For Guerrero, fulfilling her dreams meant departing from the stage and stepping into the literary world. She always wrote in journals and felt like she’d always been a writer but didn’t know that was a job she could have. She wrote a lot in college while studying performance and theatre arts and that’s when she experienced her own “late coming-of-age” in realizing acting wasn’t something she wanted to pursue any longer. When she finally stopped and asked herself “What do I actually love doing?” it was then that she realize writing was her passion and she began working in publishing. She adds, “that was the door that allowed me to understand that there are also like a lot of ways to live in the world and people who make livings off their writing.”

While working in executive positions at publishing houses like HarperCollins, she’d loved helping other writers achieve their dreams and get published. But when Guerrero read The War of Art by Steven Pressfield everything changed for her. It covered many topics but most importantly, it taught her that she needed to take herself seriously before anyone else did. She began writing everyday and soon published essays in outlets like Hungry Hearts, as well as an essay collection entitled Walking In My Joy, co-written with famed television actress Jenifer Lewis (Sister Act).

But, she says, the most important thing that changed the trajectory of her career and life would be her biggest project yet with the start of her novel in 2022. “That’s the writing I’m most proud of right now because it proved to me that I’m a writer, that I can be a writer, and that there’s a path forward of having it as a career.”

Throughout the writing process, she sought guidance from literary works including Writers and Lovers by Lily King, which taught her the value of the struggle in writing and the freedom of releasing the desire for perfectionism. Culturally, she took great inspiration from two works by Dominican writers: Dominicana by Angie Cruz and In The Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez, a historical fiction novel about the activism and tragic deaths of the Mirabal sisters from DR.

“Those were so integral to me even believing that a Dominican woman could be a writer,” she says. “I remember being so deeply in awe because I was reading about my culture and my country. They lived in my mind as I wrote and were the biggest catalysts.”

Much like Alvarez and Cruz, she drew inspiration from real life in developing Xiomara but soon realized the character had developed into her own person. In the earlier drafts, Guerrero shares that Xiomara was “a bit more like me” but she soon learned the character had her own hand in developing her identity.

“She’s telling me what she wants to do and not the other way around. So that was fun to play with,” she explains. “But I also wanted there to be emotional truth about what it feels like to be a woman in the world who’s striving forward and also not being perfect. What does it mean to be bad in the world? As an author, I relate to those things. And that’s what I love about fiction because you can float to a totally different world.”

At many points throughout the novel, Xiomara presents this hard, cynical front that covers her sadness, grief, frustration, and anger at her life. She has a hard time saying no to demands of her time and energy out of desperation. Even when presented with kindness from other characters, like Santi, the new hire at the print shop where she works, she’s aloof and distant, traumatized from the aftermath of her sister Nena’s death. Over time, we see her disillusionment with the entertainment industry because of the mismatch between her ambition and the power trips of those men around her, mirroring Guerrero’s own experiences. Ultimately, rather than being chosen for her dream role with her dream director, it is Xiomara who chooses herself, refusing to become small or silent or people-pleasing or easily taken advantage of, and in fact, choosing a new career entirely. Because of this transformation, the book shows the importance of asking important questions of what you really want in life and not sacrificing who you are for who you’ll become.

Looking ahead, Guerrero is currently at the early stages of her second novel. And she’s also at work on the script for a feature adaptation of My Train Leaves at Three in collaboration with Dominican screenwriter and producer Gabriela Ortega. It will be a bit different from the novel, which takes place in Xiomara’s head and gives voice to her interior life. In contrast, the film will have a bit more action and put her in different scenarios that will help her come alive for the audience in a different way. There’s no potential release date or details yet since it’s still in early development. And in every one of her creative endeavors, she tries to keep in mind the hard but necessary lessons she’s learned from her early start in show business, and that’s to take up space. Like Xiomara also has to learn in the book, we have to become less afraid of being small. We should feel empowered to speak up, make noise, and give voice to our truth, and Guerrero applies this most of all to her writing. She notes:

“Writing and being a writer is a verb. It is a dedication and a craft and a muscle. You have to take time to like understand your craft and understand your voice. You need to have dedication and a voice, and that is something that I don’t think our community struggles with. I’ve never met a Latina that doesn’t have a voice or an opinion, and your own voice is going to be special, different, and so necessary right now.”