the distance between us by reyna grande book

My hometown of Iguala de la Independencia in the southern state of Guerrero is surrounded by mountains. The dirt road was full of rocks waiting to trip me, but that day I was extra careful because I carried my papi in my arms, and he could break easily. Mago (short for Magloria) took my bag of clothes so I could hold Papi’s photo with both hands. “If we’re both here making dollars, it will be faster to buy the materials for the house,” he’d said, then they would come back to Mexico to build our house.īut in the meantime he was leaving us without a mother. Even though he was a bricklayer and could build a house with his own hands, he couldn’t find work in Mexico because of the weak economy, so he’d left to go to the place everyone in my hometown calls El Otro Lado, “The Other Side.” Three weeks earlier he’d called Mami to tell her he needed her help. He wanted to build us a house-a real house made of brick and concrete. Papi had left for the United States two years before. She didn’t understand that this paper face behind a wall of glass was the only father I knew. “Your grandmother has pictures of him at her house,” Mami said. “He’s my papi,” I said, and I clutched the frame tight against my chest. “Why are you taking that?” Mami said as we headed down the dirt road to Papi’s mother’s house, where we would be staying while Mami was gone. My uncle was putting a photo of my father into a box. Just as we were about to step into the sunlight, I caught a glimpse of Papi. Mami’s brothers were packing our belongings for storage.

My sister, Mago my brother, Carlos and I grabbed our bags of clothes and followed Mami out the door of the little house we’d been renting. She was going to a place most parents never come back from, a place that had already taken my father, and was now taking my mother.

“Not too long,” Mami replied, closing her suitcase. Both funny and heartbreaking, The Distance Between Us sheds light on the immigrant experience beautifully capturing the struggle that Reyna and her siblings endured while trying to assimilate to a different culture, language, and family life in El Otro Lado (The Other Side). When her parents make the dangerous and illegal trek across the Mexican border in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced to live with their stern grandmother, as they wait for their parents to build the foundation of a new life.īut when things don’t go quite as planned, Reyna finds herself preparing for her own journey to “El Otro Lado” to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years: her long-absent father. Award-winning author Reyna Grande shares her personal experience of crossing borders and cultures in this middle grade adaptation of her memoir, The Distance Between Us-“an important account of the many ways immigration impacts children” ( Booklist, starred review).

The distance between us by reyna grande book