Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right.

Learn more at RWJF.org.

This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.

Today's guest writes, there is absolutely no doubt that I was 100% sexualized as a child.

She's referring to when she was a pre-teen child star modeling herself on Madonna.

You probably don't know her name, Tamara Yahia, because she grew up in Argentina and Buenos Aires

and moved to America in 1995 when she was

13. The move was initially traumatic because she was about to become an even bigger star in Argentina

after landing a role in the cast of a new TV show which became the Argentinian equivalent of the

Mickey Mouse Club,

and it was a big hit. But she was denied that opportunity because her family had already

planned to move to the U.S. Argentina's economy was in a downturn. The middle class was

collapsing. Her father's business had gone bankrupt, and the family was broke. It was the second time the family moved to California.

This time, as they were in the Immigration and Naturalization Office about to get their green cards,

they were nearly deported instead because they'd overstayed their visa.

Yahia now lives in L.A., which has been at the epicenter of President

Trump's efforts to deport people who are here illegally, and some legal residents have been

swept up in the process. Tamara Yahia has written a new memoir called, Cry for Me, Argentina,

my life as a failed child star. It follows her tumultuous life, moving with her family from

Argentina to California, then back to Argentina, then back to the U.S., in an eight-year period

of her childhood. She also writes about what it was like being Jewish in Argentina.

...