Award-winning actor, writer, director, and producer Rick Najera is a quadruple threat and brutally honest with a comedic twist when he recalls his experience working in Hollywood as a Latino.

Mexican American born, Najera, who made a special appearance at La Casa Azul Bookstore in New York this weekend, shares his story in latest book, a memoir, titled Almost White: Forced Confessions of a Latino in Hollywood.

"My life, just looking at it individually, really tells the whole story of the Latino experience in America," Najera told NPR's Michel Martin.

He was inspired to write his memoir after suffering from a seizure about a year and a half ago, which put him in a stage 3 coma and in intensive care.

Najera has worked with the legendary Sidney Poitier, Oscar-winning actress Whoopi Goldberg and comedic-actors John Leguizamo and Jim Carrey. He was a writer for In Living Color and MADtv. And if that wasn't impressive enough, he added a successful Broadway production to his resume, by writing and starring in Latinologues.  

Despite his success, Najera witnessed firsthand the "lack of diversity" in the writers' rooms.

According to Najera, "Hollywood is ... most likely a scared, white, 20-year-old boy."

"This is a problem in writers' rooms," he adds, "the typical Hollywood writer doesn't have experience interacting on a regular basis with people of color."  Najera also pointed out that a lack of diversity in the writers' room isn't apparent to most audiences.

In an interview with NY1, Najera delves further into the perception of Latinos.

"The way the media looks at Latinos a lot of times, we're not black, that's one group, and we're not white, so we're 'almost white,' so a lot of times, they're unable to define us," he says. "And as a people, we are 53 million people in the United States. We're here to stay. We're not leaving anywhere, The border crossed us. We didn't cross the border."

One reviewer of Almost White: Forced Confessions of a Latino in Hollywood summed it up nicely by saying:

"Rather than glossing over the complexity of his background, Najera presents the difficulties he encounters throughout life as he straddles the hyphen that divides his Mexican-American identity. From growing up among mostly white people (the old neighbor lady who dutifully changed Rick's name to "Ricardo;" his childhood friend whose family always served tacos to make Rick feel "more comfortable,") to the folks in Hollywood casting who insisted he was "not Mexican enough" or who repeatedly pigeon-holed him in drug lord or gang roles, Rick tells each story with a dry dose of humor and keeps moving forward.

"Najera's biggest accomplishment throughout Almost White is not that he tells "the" Latino or Mexican-American tale--rather, he tells his own tale of living in an either-or, neither-nor land of negotiating his own cultural, ethnic, and racial identity(ies) in his very own way, laughing all the while. He recognizes the multi-layered issue of what is frequently referred to as the "Latino" experience in the United States and refuses to see it homogenously. This is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding the complex dynamics--both internal and external--that form Hollywood stereotypes and images as well as our personally apprehended sense of self."

Najera recently wrote, starred in, and produced his second feature film, Taco Shop, and penned the holiday feature film, Nothing Like the Holidays (starring John Leguizamo, Freddy Rodríguez, Debra Messing), which won him a prestigious American Latino Media Arts (ALMA) Award. He has been nominated for two Writers Guild of America (WGA) Awards for his writing on MADtv and honored twice by Hispanic Business Magazine as one of its "100 Most Influential Hispanics."