Publishers Weekly
Award-winning novelist (Across a Hundred Mountains) Grande captivates and inspires in her memoir. Raised in Mexico in brutal poverty during the 1980s, four-year-old Grande and her two siblings lived with their cruel grandmother after both parents departed for the U.S. in search of work. Grande deftly evokes the searing sense of heartache and confusion created by their parents’ departure. Eight years later her father returned and reluctantly agreed to take his children to the States. Yet life on the other side of the border was not what Grande imagined: her father’s new girlfriend’s indifference to the three children becomes more than apparent. Though Grande’s father continually stressed the importance of his children obtaining an education, his drinking resulted in violence, abuse, and family chaos. Surrounded by family turmoil, Grande discovered a love of writing and found solace in library books, and she eventually graduated from high school and went on to become the first person in her family to graduate from college. Tracing the complex and tattered relationships binding the family together, especially the bond she shared with her older sister, the author intimately probes her family’s history for clues to its disintegration. Recounting her story without self-pity, she gracefully chronicles the painful results of a family shattered by repeated separations and traumas (Aug.)
Sonia Nazario
In this poignant memoir about her childhood in Mexico, Reyna Grande skillfully depicts another side of the immigrant experience—the hardships and heartbreaks of the children who are left behind. Through her brutally honest firsthand account of growing up in Mexico without her parents, Grande sheds light on the often overlooked consequence of immigration—the disintegration of a family.
The Christian Science Monitor
One the 15 Best Books of 2012
Los Angeles Review of Books
A deeply personal coming-of-age story that extols the power of self-reliance and the love of books.
Sandra Cisneros
I’ve been waiting for this book for decades. The American story of the new millennium is the story of the Latino immigrant, yet how often has the story been told by the immigrant herself? What makes Grande’s beautiful memoir all the more extraordinary is that, through this hero’s journey, she speaks for millions of immigrants whose voices have gone unheard.
San Antonio Express News
Powerful, harrowing.
NBC Latino
Heart-warming. . . . Even with the challenges of learning English, earning good grades and fighting her way through turbulent adolescence, Grande emerged as a successful writer whose prose has the potential to touch the generation of youth whose story is so reminiscent of her own.
Texas Observer
Many of us find it difficult to practice diplomacy with our relatives. But when typical family squabbles are complicated by national borders—as they are in Reyna Grande’s excellent new memoir—the stakes are raised far higher than ‘Who’s cooking Thanksgiving dinner this year?’
Washington Independent Review of Books
Eloquent, honest storytelling. This book would be fabulous required reading for college freshmen or, even better, for freshman members of Congress,
Christian Science Monitor
Accomplishes one of the great things books can do: make an abstract idea real.
Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail - Cheryl Strayed
Reyna Grande is a fierce, smart, shimmering light of a writer with an important story to tell.
LA Times
A brutally honest book...akin to being the “Angela’s Ashes” of the modern Mexican immigrant experience.
The California Report
Generous and humble. . . . Makes palpable a human dilemma and dares us to dismiss it.
BookPage
An important piece of America’s immigrant history.
Booklist
The poignant yet triumphant tale Grande tells of her childhood and eventual illegal immigration puts a face on issues that stir vehement debate.
Slate
The sadness at the heart of Grande’s story is unrelenting; this is the opposite of a light summer read. But that’s OK, because . . . this book should have a long shelf life.
The Daily Beast
A timely and a vivid example of how poverty and immigration can destroy a family.
The Christian Science Monitor
One the 15 Best Books of 2012
Booklist
The poignant yet triumphant tale Grande tells of her childhood and eventual illegal immigration puts a face on issues that stir vehement debate.
Slate
The sadness at the heart of Grande’s story is unrelenting; this is the opposite of a light summer read. But that’s OK, because . . . this book should have a long shelf life.
Latina Style
"Has the power to change minds and hearts."
author of The House of Mango Street Sandra Cisneros
I’ve been waiting for this book for decades. The American story of the new millenium is the story of the Latino immigrant, yet how often has the story been told by the immigrant herself? What makes Grande’s beautiful memoir all the more extraordinary is that, through this hero’s journey, she speaks for millions of immigrants whose voices have gone unheard.
La Bloga
Shows off Grande’s exceptional writing skill. . . . The writer’s economy of detail enriches the reading. . . . Anyone who reads The Distance Between Us will find the distance between their insularity and the humanity of immigrants is the two inches occupied in the memoir’s 322 pages.
The Hispanic Reader
Told in simple, easy to read—yet descriptive—prose. . . . An inspirational book for young Latinos or anyone who has faced adversity. Just keep those tissues handy.
Alegria Magazine
Personal, heart-wrenching, and ultimately triumphant. . . . An engaging writer with a talent for infusing her narrative with personal and affecting characterizations and stories, Grande truly offers an unprecedented look into the immigration experience. . . . The Distance Between Us has the power to change minds and hearts.
Dallas Morning News
Grande connects readers with intimacy to the enormous emotional dislocation children suffer when parents leave them behind. She grabs your heart and strums music on it. She gives a pulse to her profound statistic that 80 percent of Latin American children in U.S. schools have been separated from a parent in the migration process. It is one of very few stats in a book of simple prose and ironic metaphor.
From the Publisher
"Reyna Grande's extraordinary journey towards the American dream will be an inspiration to anyone who has ever dreamed of a better life.”
—Ligiah Villalobos, Writer and Executive Producer of La Misma Luna (Under the Same Moon)
Library Journal
After writing two award-winning novels, Grande gets down to the nitty-gritty and chronicles her life as an undocumented immigrant, from her border crossing at age nine. The distance widens between her and her father until she must finally make her own life. Brave memoir.
Kirkus Reviews
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family's cycle of separation and reunification. Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family's only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents' love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator's hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define--in the U.S., her name's literal translation, "big queen," led to ridicule from other children--and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence "my mamá loves me" (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to "rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?" A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
