Achievement

Chapter 11 to END (pg 227-322)

Grande, R. (2012). The Distance Between Us: A Memoir. (pp. 227-322) New York, NY: Washington Square Press.

Day 6:

Now, Reyna is on her way to becoming a legal resident of the US. She has improved her English greatly but still speaks with an accent, which becomes the thing that she is insecure about. In middle school, she joins the band and begins to play the sax. She falls in love with music because it wasn't hindered by her English abilities or accent. This is the same motivation that leads her to love reading and writing once she becomes fluent in English with an accent remaining.

Earlier, Reyna foreshadowed that something bad was going to happen in relation to Papi's dream house. Their aunt, Papi's youngest sister, steals his house. Abuela Evila, now sickly, was manipulated by his sister into signing over the deed to her property and his sister moved into the house he paid for. This act breaks him. He had begun to take adult ESL classes and work towards a better future but following this betrayal, he gives up. 

Reyna, on the other hand, pushes on. She graduates from the ESL program before beginning eighth grade. She has fallen deeply in love with books, however, Reyna does feel slightly disconnected from the characters in most of the books she reads. She specifically mentions the Sweet Valley series that follows rich, white twins. This was completely unrelatable to her but she still saw it as a sort of dream. She does find some connection in books by V.C. Andrew (Flowers in the Attic) as those characters had struggles similar to Reyna's despite being American characters. While this was the late 1980s, this largely relates to the very recent movements for more equal representation in media, particularly for young girls to have (fictional or real) role models. 

Not long after this, Mago becomes the first person in her family to graduate high school. Reyna was the third to graduate from junior high. Just before this, Mago, Carlos, and Reyna obtained green cards, making them legal US citizens. Reyna's fifteenth birthday is approaching but her earlier dreams of a quinceanera (formed as a child hidden underneath a table at her cousin Elida's own party) will not be realized, due to her family's financial situation.  While a quinceanera is typically a large moment than any young Mexican girl looks forward to, I feel that this must have been especially disappointing for Reyna as she has already begun to feel that she is losing her connection to her heritage. Reyna would later get her quinceanera, through the efforts of her sister, when she is nearly sixteen, but it still disappoints her. Once she finally achieves her dream of dancing with her father, she is disappointed. She has known her father was not what she had hoped for when he was simply a photograph but it is in this moment that she truly realizes it. Now she knows that Mago was truly more of a parent to her than either her Mami or Papi.

In Reyna's senior year of high school, she has a chance to reconnect. She travels with Mami and Mago to Iguala and sees her family there for the first time since she ran across the border as a small child. She no longer sees her hometown through the blinders that come with being young, the beauty she once saw is gone, especially now that Iguala no longer has a functioning train station. She sees the filth of her environment and she's shocked by it. She attempts to reach out to old friends but the time and distance have soured those relationships. Now, she is no longer Mexican enough and she feels that she has truly lost a part of herself by leaving her home country. 

The summer after Reyna becomes the third high school graduate in her family, she enrolls in an English writing course at Pasadena City College, largely against the will of her father who has lost hope in her after Mago and Carlos both dropped out of college. During this course, Reyna makes a connection with her professor, one that will last for years to come. Diana Savas, a Greek-American woman who spoke fluent Spanish, becomes the supporter Reyna needs to

achieve her goals. At first, she serves as one of the closest things Reyna has to a friend. Diana introduces Reyna to Chinco/Latino literature, the type of writing she had missed out on as a child. When Reyna's father is arrested, she makes the decision that she must leave that house. She tries to stay with her mother but the apartment is cramped and too far away from the PCC campus, where she is now a full-time student. Diana opens her home to Reyna and encourages her passion for writing. She also supports Reyna in her efforts to transfer to the University of California in Santa Cruz as well as assist her in finding and applying for scholarships to fund her college career. 

The first day that Reyna is at UCSC, having just moved into a student apartment, she walks to the ocean and recalls that moment during her first beach trip in which Papi held her hand. In this moment, she realizes that she has worked hard to get where she is, largely by herself, and she finally loses the last of her hopeful attachments to her father. She ends her book with the phrase "I let go."

In the epilogue we learn that Reyna becomes the first person in her family to graduate college, as well as how she made it from that moment to where she is today, writing this memoir. I personally give this book a 4.5/5. I truly enjoyed reading it. In book one, I did feel that the progression of time was too slow but once I reached book two, it became hard for me to even put it down. Despite the incredibly heartbreaking story that is her life, Reyna still manages to inject humor (some lines had me laughing for a few solid minutes) and you can really feel her through her writing. I do think that this memoir exceeded my expectations and I plan to read the other books she has written.

El Otro Lado Is "Other" No More

Chapter 15 to Book Two Chapter 10 (pg 112-226)

Grande, R. (2012). The Distance Between Us: A Memoir. (pp. 112-226) New York, NY: Washington Square Press.

Day 4:

As mentioned in my last post, Abuelita Chinta took much better care of Reyna and her siblings than Abuela Evila, despite the fact that Abuelita Chinta was much poorer than Abuela Evila. This is further shown by what Reyna describes in Chapter 15:

Abuelita Chinta did her best to look after us, but she didn't earn much money as a healer. It was hard for her to feed four children and herself. What little food she bought she distributed evenly among us. Sometimes she went without food and made sure we were fed first.

 This is in great contrast to the treatment they received under Abuela Evila who would feed herself meat while Reyna, Mago, and Carlos had to settle for oily beans. 

Here, Mami returns upon the death of the wrestler and, after a period of sorrow, picks back up where she left working at the record shop. However, she isn't truly back. She begins to stay night at her sister's home until she lives with her sister altogether. Reyna and her siblings are still under the roof and care of Abuelita Chinta. Reyna describes her mother's leaving as worse than the scorpion sting that sent her to the hospital. Had her mother not returned she likely would have forgotten her, like Reyna had forgotten her father. Instead, the constant "coming and going" of Mami just made it harder on Reyna. Eventually, after Mago's graduation party, they being to establish a better relationship with their mother. Once again, Reyna uses fairy tales to describe her life (in this case the story of Hansel and Gretel). This shows how Reyna thought as a child, in fairy tales and holidays (she quantified the time Mami was gone in birthdays and Mother's Days). This newly reformed relationship is once again shattered with the introduction of a new boyfriend during the Christmas season.

In May, Papi returns to Mexico bringing with him the woman he left Mami for. He plans to take Mago back with him to the US, but

¹Mexican Border Patrol, May 2013

Reyna and Carlos convince him to take all his children. However, Mami clings onto Betty, the only child that could legally cross the border. So, Papi, Mago, Carlos, and Reyna enter the US at night and proceed to LA to start their life in El Otro Lado. Here book one ends.

Day 5:

Book two begins and the chapter numbers reset. The prologue for book two opens in 2010. Reyna has been in the US for 25 years and it seems her and her siblings have become estranged from their father, brought back together by Papi's diagnosis of liver cancer. We then move back to the time we were at at the end of book one, Summer 1985. 

At this time, Reyna, Mago, and Carlos have been in the US for a few months. They saw the ocean for the first time in their life. During their beach visit, Reyna experiences a moment with her father that mirrors one her parents shared with each other. Reyna, not knowing how to swim, is scared to enter the ocean beyond the waves hitting her feet. So Papi takes her by the hand and walks out with her, promising never to let go of her. This is exactly the same as Mami and Papi in the pool at the Iguala social club and I know from the prologue that it ends the same way. At some point, Papi does let go of Reyna which is why it took his illness to bring their family back together twenty years from this moment. 

It doesn't take long for the novelty of the US to fade for Reyna. She begins to get homesick, from the first day of school in America. I had mentioned that I wondered how difficult it would be for her to adjust. At this moment, in chapter one, she finds Mexico everywhere and even questions herself "do I belong here?" Even as she becomes more accustomed to her new life she still feels a bit torn. Mago has begun to assimilate, taking on the name Maggie. But Reyna still holds her attachments to Mexico, continuing to hold onto the comfort that her umbilical cord, buried on Abuela Evila's property in Mexico, gave her when Mami was in the US. Now, it serves the same purpose though with different motivations. 

Obviously, given the title of the memoir, distance is a major theme. When Mami and her children are separated physically by 2,000 miles or just emotionally from the toll that physical distance and other events has taken. Eventually, the physical distance becomes practically nonexistent. Papi, Mami, Reyna, and all three of her siblings live in LA (though Mami and Betty live elsewhere in the city). Yet still, a gap between them all persists, one that I don't think ever closes. 

¹Image retrieved from: http://www.kpbs.org/news/2013/may/14/report-scrutinizes-new-border-patrol-punishments/

Change of Scenery

Chapter 6 to Chapter 14 pg. 48-111

Grande, R. (2012). The Distance Between Us: A Memoir. (pp. 48-111) New York, NY: Washington Square Press.


Day 2: 

The Mexican flag over Iguala. ¹

Chapter 6 began with Reyna starting school and Mago explaining the flag ceremony. Right at the beginning, you get a sense of Reyna's pride in her heritage as Mago explains how their hometown was key for Mexican independence and was the first place the national anthem was sung. I could tell that, despite the terrible conditions she lived in, she still loved her hometown and her country in the best way a 5 year old girl could. It was at this point that I could tell that whenever Reyna did make it to the US, it was going to be a difficult transition. I recognized that she would likely struggle to hold onto her roots and I wondered when she began to learn English, as it certainly wasn't during her first grade schooling in Iguala. 

Reyna also continues to explain some Mexican superstitions. She's left-handed and her teacher scolds her about using her left hand to write. This is because the left side is "the side of evil." This is what she is told by her grandmother and teacher, but her mother explained it as a gift from a left-handed family member who had died a week before Reyna's birth. Reyna will later be quite defiant to her teacher and purposefully write with her left-hand. This is likely due to the attachment she feels to her mother and, as such, her mother's words overpower those of everyone else. Reyna also explains an instance of superstition when Mago wants to eat a mango that a boy had dropped to the ground. The superstition is that food that falls on the ground has been kissed by the devil, though this one is valid as it is unsanitary to eat food off the ground and the superstition likely developed when people made a connection to illness and having eaten food fallen on the ground. 

I wanted to make a note of a statement in Chapter 8. Here, Reyna's father has begun construction on his dream home on a corner of their grandmother's property. It doesn't even have one wall by the time they have to stop sending money for construction but before this Reyna foreshadows something. She writes "if only he had realized he was making a mistake, building a house on a property that was not in his name" (pg 59). I have not read far enough to know why this became a mistake but I do know that it means something big and negative will happen in connection to her father and his house. 

In Chapter 10, Reyna's mother returns, pack them up, and takes them to her mother's house. At Abuelita Chinta's home, which is nothing more than a shack, we learn why she returned. Reyna and her siblings, as hopeful children, believe that she has come to take them back to the US with her. However, she has returned because her husband, Reyna's father, has left her for another woman. This has broken her and we know this by the fact that even young Reyna notices that her mother is not the woman she was when she left them over two years ago. 

Day 3:

Reyna's mother, Mami as she is called by her children, attempts to restart her life in Iguala. She has given up on her past job, selling Avon products, because she does not want to face the shame that would come from interacting with everyone that she had left. So she begins to sell snacks and cigarettes at the social club located on the edge of the poor neighborhood they now live in. This club, essentially an extravagant country club right next to a shack neighborhood, hosts multiple events on weekends in which many poor families attempt to win the sympathies of the rich families attending in order to make a little money. One night, Mami decides to try selling things within the building (her and everyone else are supposed to stay outside but every now and then someone will try their luck that the hosts won't kick them out). Reyna and her siblings, there to serve as a pathos appeal, get distracted by the beautiful swimming pool on the grounds of the club. When Mami returns, she gets nostalgic. Reyna's father had tiled that pool and the workers were given a day for them and their families to use it upon completion. Mami couldn't swim but her husband assured her that he wouldn't let go of her and he didn't then. But now, he had not only let go of her, he had thrown her aside and that nostalgia morphs into anger and sadness. 

Chapter 12 opens with the story of why Mami left. Her husband announced that he was in love with another woman, refused to let her take their youngest child (Elizabeth, born an American citizen), and kicked her out. Mami kidnaps her baby and is threatened by her husband with a gun to give her back. They both all end up back in Mexico but her husband simply sneaks back across the border a week later, leaving Mami and four children stranded on their own. This is not the story that her children will hear until they are older but they know he abandoned them and Mami. In this same chapter, Mami leaves behind her children again, with a new boyfriend who dreams of being a wrestler.

Once again left without their parents, Reyna and her siblings must readjust to living without Mami. This time, the grandmother they are with is much more caring and loving. They eat better and are better taken care of, despite Abuelita Chinta having less money than Abuela Evila. At this point, they have little true hope in their parents. Reyna compares her father's dream home to the story of the 3 little pigs, a place he wants to protect his family from the wolf. But with the news of the death of a young cousin in a large storm, Reyna begins to worry that something will happen to her or her siblings before Papi returns or that he may never return at all.

¹image retrieved from http://www.wikiwand.com/es/Iguala_de_la_Independencia

Mexican Mugs & Memoirs

Prologue to Chapter 5  pg. 3-47

Grande, R. (2012). The Distance Between Us: A Memoir. (pp. 1-47) New York, NY: Washington Square Press.

Expectations:

I expect to learn about the immigrant experience in America on a deeply emotional level and be able to finish the book with an understanding of such an experience in a way that I could not have had before, as my family has been in America for many generations. I think it will be especially relevant given the rhetoric used in the most recent presidential race and the stance on immigration, particularly from Mexico, that President Donald Trump holds. I feel that, from standpoints similar to my own, it can be quite easy to reduce immigrants to a faceless mass whether one strongly supports or opposes immigration into the US. I believe this memoir will serve to open my eyes on the matter and personalize all those who face the same struggles as Grande, as well as educate me on Mexican and Mexican-American culture.

 Day 1:
So, this post is just encompassing the part of the memoir that I read on the first day opening the book. 

It may be a bit hard to tell in the picture, but there were a lot of moments/phrases that stood out to me (I expect to use a few too many of my sticky tabs in reading this). The thing that stood out most to me was actually in the short prologue, in which Reyna (as a child) associated El Otro Lado (the other side: America) with Mexican folklore. Specifically, the association with La Lorena, a being that steals children with El Otro Lado as a being that steals parents (pg. 3-4). This is coming from the mind of a very young Reyna, only 4 years old, upon learning that her mother is going to America at the request of her husband, a father that Reyna does not remember. This is well shown in the fact that Reyna became attached to a specific photograph of her father, as it was the one she had always considered to be her papi as it was the photo in the home she grew up in (pg. 6). 

Young Reyna held a bit of resentment to her mother for leaving her and her siblings. Her mother often said "my husband needs me" to which angered Reyna, thinking "As if my father is not a grown man. As if her children didn't need her as well" (pg. 7). It was only with reflection from much later did Reyna realize how important it was for her mother to go, as many men from their hometown left for America and never returned or called for the families they left behind. Certainly, this was a source of stress for her mother, one that Reyna at 4 could not comprehend despite knowing of fathers and husbands who had started entirely new lives upon reaching El Otro Lado. Even still, to me as someone who has lived quite well in the same home with both my parents for my entire life, it is difficult for me to accept how her mother was seemingly so easily able to leave her children behind. I do not know if she experienced any sort of conflict as I only have the information given by Reyna who is relying on her memories from her early childhood. 

What I am sure of is that Reyna's mother thought that she was leaving her children in good hands with their Abuela Evila, their father's mother who was not fond of his choice of a wife. However, this was not the case. Reyna and her siblings, Carlos and Mago, were mistreated by their grandmother largely due to her distaste with their mother. She used the money sent by Reyna's parents for herself and their cousin (whose mother had become successful in America but had not returned to take her daughter with her). While their cousin, Elida, always had beautiful clothing, silky hair, and proper meals, Reyna and her siblings' had no shoes, old, ratty clothing, "louse-ridden hair [and] abdomens swelled with ringworms" (pg. 24). This contrast shows that their grandmother was purposefully neglecting three of her grandchildren whilst she spoiled another. It wasn't a matter of not being able to adequately provide for them but rather a wish not to. 

Within chapter 5, Elida has her quinceanera. This is an important cultural event signifying a girl's entrance into adulthood at age 15 (much like the Filipino debut at age 18 and the, now uncommon, debutante ball typically associated with the white Southern United States). It is easy to tell how important this event is as Elida's mother comes from America to put it together (however, she still does not bring her daughter back with her when she leaves). Elida dances El Vals de las Mariposas with

1 El Vals de las Mariposas 

a butcher from their town, a cousin of the mother. This dance is typically a father-daughter dance but Elida's father is not present, her mother had remarried and had a son while in America. Reyna, now 5, began to cry and pray for her father to return before her quinceanera as she only wanted to dance El Vals de las Mariposas with him, as was tradition. From this, it is clear just how important this event is within the Mexican culture and also to the girl herself. Reyna wants to have her event be just as grand but more so she wants to follow the tradition and dance with her father, whom she doesn't even remember. In this moment it is not her mother that she wishes for even though her mother raised her and has been the person she has been missing greatly for the past few months. 

I can already tell that this book is going to meet my expectations. I'm greatly looking forward to seeing how Reyna's life in Mexico progresses as well as how she adjusts to life in America. While Reyna was a child in the 1980s, I am getting a view of life in Mexico that I would never get in traveling there. I was in Mexico for a day last year and was simply a tourist (the mug in the photo is a souvenir from that trip). Then, I didn't even much time in the city I was at (Playa del Carmen) before proceeding

Xplor Park, Playa del Carmen

outside the city to an "adventure park." I did get a sense of how Mexico has developed in recent years as my guide explained how the city has grown substantially economically and physically within the past decade. I do hope to travel to Mexico again and actually be able to spend time outside of tourist catered activities. I believe Reyna's memoir, while focused on immigration, will be valuable to enhancing my appreciation of Mexican culture and help me to be a more considerate visitor. 

1 [Karla Medina-Barraza]. (2016, August 16). Ruby's Quinceañera - Vals de las Mariposas. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLWMQijjwLI