Reyna Grande and Her Novel The Distance Between Us

Reyna Grande was born in Guerrero in 1975 in a poor family. That is the reason, when she was five, her folks left her and her kin under the watchful eye of their grandma to go to the United States looking for work and set up a home for themselves and their youngsters there. Reyna’s first novel, Over a Hundred Mountains recounts Juana Garcia, whose father vanished 19 years sooner in the wake of leaving the family to go to the United States of America.

Reyna and her kin lived in unfortunate conditions in a little shack made of bamboo sticks and tar-splashed cardboard, which was actually similar to the shack where Juana lived. A standout amongst her most important encounters is managing the floods each blustery season. ‘Our shack was near the trench, and at whatever point it rained actually hard, the waterway flooded. I woke up one night to discover our shack loaded up with water,’ She additionally shares the anguish of watching her grandma bite the dust days subsequent to being stung by a scorpion that tumbled from the roof of their shack.

At last touching base in the US, Reyna was taken a crack at fifth grade and put in a little corner, alongside other non-English speakers, and was educated by the teacher’s assistant. She took a gander at the children in the study hall who were being educated by the educator, and felt miserable to be prohibited, staying there in a little corner, not having the capacity to speak with her very own instructor. Reyna graduated from Benjamin Franklin Secondary School in Good country Park (Los Angeles) in 1993 and later Pasadena City School from 1994-1996. She at that point transferred to the College of California, Santa Clause Cruz, graduating in 1999 with a B.A. in Experimental writing and Film and Video. She also attended National College and got her teaching certification in 2003. She at that point tutored English as second language to sixth – eighth graders until 2004 when she changed over to teaching grown-ups English as second language.

In 2003, Reyna additionally took part in the Developing Voices Rosenthal Association program offered by Pen Center United States of America where she met her specialist, Jenoyne Adams, who sent Reyna’s original copy for Over a Hundred Mountains to a manager. Reyna is also a mother to a four-year-old Nathaniel.

Reyna Grande’s book recounts the account of illicit migration and numerous different stories and shows how they are all associated. It recounts to the narrative of destitution that powers youngsters out of school and into the fields. It recounts to the account of moms who surrender their youngsters and fathers who drink their stress away until they become brutal. It also recounts to the story of youngsters who ascend over their destitution and surrender and maltreatment to experience their fantasies and add to the scholarly world.

Reyna Grande is four-years of age when her mom abandons her in Mexico to work in the United States. Her dad is there already, and alone without guardians, Reyna and her siblings live with their tough and some of the time merciless paternal grandparents. She depicts living in cardboard homes that flood in the rainstorm and have scorpions slithering on the walls. More agonizing than her neediness, however, is her yearning for her folks.

The main portion of the book depicts the youngsters’ life in Mexico, and it is emotional to read. The poverty is immovable, and the Grande siblings yearn for adoration and fondness that their grandparents will not give. At that point their dad returns from California and takes them away to live with him in the United States, and they trust that their troubles are finally over.

Obviously, they are not. In California the Grande children face separation from their teachers and colleagues. They battle to learn English, and they stress over being expelled. At home their dad is with another lady, and the kids miss their mom who has returned to Mexico. Their dad drinks and flies into wraths, beating his kids every time and again with his belt and clench hands.

I frequently wonder what makes a story progressively fit either to nonfiction or fiction, and The Distance Between Us starts to respond to that question. This book must be verifiable. The misery in it is unreasonably persevering for fiction. Were this book fiction, it could be all the more effectively limited as doubtful, an embellishment intended to feature the battles of outsider youngsters. Grande distributes it as verifiable, however, and in this manner she constrains her readers to acknowledge her encounters as obvious. It truly was that awful.

At last the book ends up about the storyteller’s battles to comprehend her dad. She devotes the book to him, and she writes of him with sympathy while also declining to shield his notoriety from times when he broke her nose or put his better half in the emergency clinic. Furthermore, she endeavors to get it. She attempts to comprehend the neediness and the mistreatment that he encountered as a youngster and how it formed him and tries to pardon.

At last, Reyna’s dad is the person who pushes her into a superior life. He advises her and she sticks to that. He enables every one of his youngsters to get their green cards, and Reyna goes to school and moves in with a teacher for assurance. This teacher acquaints her with Sandra Cisneros and other Chicana/o authors, and all of a sudden Reyna is never alone again for there are other people who share her encounters and others who look and talk as she does.

The main portion of Reyna Grande’s book, recounts Grande’s initial adolescence in a poverty stricken Mexican town; the second half pursues her cruel new life in Los Angeles after she and her kin are taken to America unlawfully.

Her dad, Natalio, left for ‘El Otro Lado’ (the opposite side) when she was two years of age. When she was four, her mom, Juana, additionally went unlawfully to America to discover him and bring him back, yet she stayed away forever. It has been a very long time since nine-year-old Reyna Grande has seen both of them. She doesn’t much recall her dad. She just knows him from his encircled picture; to her, he is ‘The Man behind the Glass.’

Reyna lives with her more established sister, Mago, and her more youthful sibling, Carlos, in the poor Mexican town of Iguala. These hardships may have been bearable on the off chance that they were a piece of an adoring family, yet Abuela Evila is cold and brutal to them. Once, she even absorbs Reyna’s hair lamp fuel as an answer for lice. Coming up short on any minding grown-ups, eleven-year-old Mago willingly volunteers to take care of her kin.

At some point, Natalio comes back to take his youngsters to America, and together, the family crosses the borders illegally. Reyna is excited to leave Abuela Evila, and for a period, she supposes her inconveniences are finished. Nonetheless, Los Angeles isn’t the Guaranteed Land she envisioned. It is loaded up with quick moving individuals and quick moving traffic. On a night called ‘Halloween,’ trolls flood the avenues. More awful still is the troublesome nearby language, English. The youngsters don’t talk it, and they are looked downward on by the neighbors and educators.

More than anything, the kin dread being come back to Abuela Evila, thus they lock in. They learn English and win decent evaluations. Natalio gets them all green cards, and in spite of the fact that his strategies are cruel, he pushes his kids to succeed. ‘Because we’re unlawful doesn’t mean we can’t dream,’ he lets them know. Reyna battles to keep up an association with her dad and to comprehend why he is how he is. As an answer, Natalio recounts to a story from his very own adolescence: when he was nine, he was given something to do in the fields keeping the bulls in line by hitting them with a pole.

One by one, as they develop mature enough, the kids leave home to get away from the range of their dad. For Reyna, this break comes when she sets off for college. She moves in with a teacher who acquaints her with creators from Latin America. This is a progressive time for Reyna. She discovers others with voices and encounters like her own, moving her to turn into a writer.

Grande’s general understanding of migration is an overwhelmingly positive one, where sheer power of will and diligent work have empowered her to accomplish the watershed snapshots of secondary school graduation, school graduation, a vocation as a teacher, the buying of a house, parenthood, and marriage.

A more intensive look uncovers the toll the foreigners experience takes. Long partitions, vulnerability, sentiments of extraordinary uncertainty and of being viewed as a lasting untouchable outcome in profound situated tension, disgrace, and an obfuscated feeling of personality. Diligent work and feasible objectives help Grande beat them, however she uncovers the long lasting scars that the family fractures made. None of her relatives are solid. The injuries are regularly not tended to legitimately but rather show themselves, as on account of her mom, as journeys for connections and circumstances that will give money related soundness regardless of whether it implies forsaking individuals and places en route.

The feelings of trepidation of the individuals who moved to get away from the jaws of savagery and neediness are never shaken off yet rather are transmitted to the kids. Thus, Grande fights the twin mental evil presences of fears of relinquishment and neediness, at the same time perceiving that their antitoxin, the American Dream, may not in reality even be her very own fantasy.

Grande’s American Dream may not be a valid dream but rather a progression of over compensatory practices that lead to material achievement while creating a profound intellectual discord about her character. Is it true that she is Mexican? Is it true that she is American? On the off chance that she is Mexican American, I’m not catching that’s meaning, and what are the social markers that give her a feeling of self? Grande frequently portrays herself and her actual personality through her hankering for certain customary Mexican dishes, which comfort her in their taste as well as in their affirmation of her pith, her center being.

Grande likewise mends the break in her personality by joining a folkloric move gathering and learning muddled Mexican moves. Authorizing Mexican customs encourages her to beat a distancing feeling of ‘otherness.’ She depicts the confused ‘skirt work,’ making the reader wish she had broadly expounded on the moves, ensembles, and combination of impacts.

Grande’s experience is significant in light of the fact that it is shared by numerous undocumented and reported workers, from Mexico as well as from different nations also, particularly those in Central America. Understanding the idea of their horrible encounters causes us to have sympathy as it produces a lot of profound respect for those focused on building a superior world for all.

The exposition in this book is plain. The author gives her story with a lot of simplicity, concentrating on the plot rather than the language. Regardless of this, the book is ground-breaking and has the right to be read generally. 

Works Cited

1. Grande, R. (2006). Over a Hundred Mountains: A Novel. Atria Books.
2. Grande, R. (2012). The Distance Between Us: A Memoir. Washington Square Press.
3. Gómez-Quiñones, J. (2013). Foreword. In Reyna Grande, The Distance Between Us: A Memoir. Washington Square Press.
4. Hirschberg, S. (2012). Crossing Over: Reyna Grande's 'The Distance Between Us'. Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/crossing-over-reyna-grandes-the-distance-between-us/
5. Ingram, J. (2007). Over a Hundred Mountains. World Literature Today, 81(5), 61–61.
6. Leal, L. (2007). Crossing Borders in Reyna Grande's Over a Hundred Mountains. Label Me Latina/o, 1(1), 1–14.
7. Mariscal, G. (2012). Review: Reyna Grande's 'The Distance Between Us'. Western American Literature, 47(1), 87–89.
8. Mexican American Bar Association. (n.d.). Reyna Grande. https://mabaattorneys.com/maba-foundation/scholarship/previous-scholarship-recipients/reyna-grande/
9. Reyna Grande's official website. (n.d.). About Reyna Grande.
10. Sánchez-Eppler, K. (2013). Reading The Distance Between Us. MELUS, 38(2), 147–166.