Analysis Of Reyna Grande's The Distance Between Us

Living in Mexico throughout her teen years was very rough. Unlike other teenagers where their parents constantly provide for their children, Marisela’s life was a lot different than the usual parent- child relationship. She lived with her Abuela ( Grandma) Lupe, along with her 3 brothers and sister. She constantly had to take care of her brothers and sister at such a young age, that she became the mother-like figure of the

Growing up with parents who are immigrants can present many obstacles for the children of those immigrants. There are many problems people face that we do not even realize. Things happen behind closed doors that we might not even be aware of. Writers Sandra Cisneros and Amy Tan help us become aware of these problems. Both of these authors express those hardships in their stories about growing up with foreign parents. Although their most apparent hardships are about different struggles, both of their stories have a similar underlying theme.

The novel Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera brings to light many issues faced by immigrant women. The novel follows the young Makina in her quest to find and bring home her brother from what she imagines to be a mystical far away land. While the novel focuses on the challenges of immigration, the underlying meaning is much more complex. In Yuri Herrera’s Signs Preceding the End of the World, the common misconception that women cannot be the strong character in the novel is challenged. This is achieved by having the female protagonist, Makina, go on a quest to save her brother, be a vital individual in her community, and fight the misogynistic society she lives in.

Enrique’s journey from Honduras to the U.S. unveils the innate loyalty of a loving child to their mother and presents the dangers that a migrant faces on the road with consistent angst; nevertheless, it supports the idea that compassion shown by some strangers can boost the retreating confidence within a person. In Sonia Nazario’s “Enrique’s Journey,” he seeks the beacon of light that all migrants hope to encounter; “El Norte.” Like many children before him, it is the answer to the problems of a hard life. While being hunted down “like animals” leading to “seven futile attempts,” he is

Caminero-Santangelo, Marta. 2007. On Latinidad: U.S. Latino Literature and the Construction of Ethnicity. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida.

Cristina Henriquez’, The Book of Unknown Americans, folows the story of a family of immigants adjusting to their new life in the United States of America. The Rivera family finds themselves living within a comunity of other immigrants from all over South America also hoping to find a better life in a new country. This book explores the hardships and injustices each character faces while in their home country as well as withina foreign one, the United States. Themes of community, identity, globalization, and migration are prevalent throughout the book, but one that stood out most was belonging. In each chacters viewpoint, Henriquez explores their feelings of the yearning they have to belong in a community so different than the one that they are used to.

In the film “Mi Familia,” we follow the story of the Mexican-American Sánchez family who settled in East Los Angeles, California after immigrating to the United States. Gregory Nava and Anna Thomas introduce the story of this family in several contexts that are developed along generations. These generations hold significant historical periods that form the identity of each individual member of the family. We start off by exploring the immigrant experience as the family patriarch heads north to Los Angeles, later we see how national events like the great depression directly impact Maria as she gets deported, although she was a US citizen. The events that follow further oppress this family and begins separate identity formations. These

Each year, thousands of Central American immigrants embark on a dangerous journey from Mexico to the United States. Many of these migrants include young children searching for their mothers who abandoned them. In Enrique’s Journey, former Los Angeles Times reporter, Sonia Nazario, recounts the compelling story of Enrique, a young Honduran boy desperate to reunite with his mother. Thanks to her thorough reporting, Nazario gives readers a vivid and detailed account of the hardships faced by these migrant children.

In "The Distance Between Us," by Reyna Grande, writes about her life in Mexico and her relationship with her mother. The selection opens up after Mago's party, where Grande describes their relationship with their mother as improving. Because Grande and her siblings do not live with their mother, every Sunday their mother visits them. Grande depicts her outings with her mother to el zocalo, where she gets treated to churros and other food as well as play day time. During Grande's outing, she writes about jealousy of wanting to hide her mother when they went out because men tend to stop to ask her for the time or would glance at her.

The Distance Between Us a memoir written by Reyna Grande, she tells a coming-of-age story and experiences on her hometown, Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico to relocate to Los Angeles, California in order to have a life with full of opportunities. Grande was part of the serial immigration, so she was following her parents coming to the United States, “El Otro Lado, the other side”(4). Grande uses Spanish diction, rhetorical questions, and visual rhetoric to provide ideas about her experience as an immigrant trying to adapt into Mexican and American societies, in order to draw the reader into her world. Through literary devices, Grande makes the reader to identify with her immigration story even if they are not Mexicans or immigrants. The Story is

The book The Distance Between Us: A Memoir by Reyna Grande provides an account of Reyna Grande’s life in Mexico and later in the United States. When she is two, her father leaves the family for the United States hoping to earn money for building a house in Mexico. Later, he sends for their mother, Juana, leaving behind three children – Reyna, Mago, and Carlos. The children experience abject poverty and others hardships under the unforgiving care of their paternal grandmother, Abuela Evila (Tobar). Her mother returns with another child, Elizabeth, and establishes an on-again and off-again relationship. Later, their father, for whom they have almost forgotten, returns and takes them on a terrifying journey to the United States ' border (Grande 317). Overall, the book narrates a child’s journey to overcome poverty and deal with the absence of parents through forgiveness and love.

In the memoir The Distance Between us, written by Reyna Grande in 2012, U.S., Reyna Grande told her story from childhood to adulthood, she described her relationship with her family and how it was affected by the distance between them. In her childhood, she was separated from her father and later from her mother, making her live with her grandmother Evila. A few years later, her mother, Juana, returned to Mexico, but she wasn’t the same happy and sweet mother Reyna had remembered, and it was because Reyna’s father got another woman. Later in the story, Reyna’s father returned to Mexico and decided to take the kids with him to the U.S. In the second half of the memoir, Reyna described her life in the U.S., her experiences, the abuses she received and how she went through a lot of things to become a successful woman. At the ending of the story, she described her feelings towards her father in a bittersweet way: “What was needed was something I was struggling to give—my forgiveness.

First of all, the setting of this novel contributes to the Rivera family’s overall perception of what it means to be an American. To start this off, the author chooses a small American city where groups of Latino immigrants with their own language and traditions, lived together in the same apartment building. All these immigrants experienced similar problems since they moved from their countries. For example, in the novel after every other chapter the author

The novel Across a Hundred Mountains by Reyna Grande is a story about two young girls and their struggling journey to find happiness between two conflicting and distinct worlds: the United States and Mexico. Juana on one side wants to get to the United States, or “el otro lado” as mentioned in the novel, to find her father who abandoned her and her mother after leaving to find work in the US. On the other hand Adelina escapes from her house in California to follow her lover to Mexico. The girls form a bond in the most unexpected of places, a Tijuana jail, and quickly form a friendship that will connect them for the rest of their lives.

When one visualizes Latino culture, the prevalent images are often bright colors, dancing, and celebrations. This imagery paints a false portrait of the life of many Latino’s, especially those that are forced to leave their home countries. Latinos often face intense poverty and oppression, whether in a Latin country, or a foreign country, such is true in Pam Ryan’s novel Esperanza Rising. Ryan chronicles the issues that many Latino immigrants face. The first is the pressure from the home country. Many of the countries face turmoil, and many are forced to leave their homes and culture. Once in a foreign place, people often struggle with standing by their own culture or assimilating to the new culture. Latino authors frequently use young adult literature as a platform to discuss the issues they face, as young adults are coming of age they struggle with their identities, personifying the struggle of old culture against the new culture.