The Distance Between Us: A Memoir - Tapa blanda

"Reyna Grande is a fierce, smart, shimmering light of a writer with an important story to tell."--Cheryl Strayed "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail "

"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."--Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street

"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."--Sonia Nazario, Pulitzer Prize winner, and author of Enrique's Journey

One of the Best Adult Books 4 Teens 2012--School Library Journal

One the 15 Best Books of 2012--The Christian Science Monitor

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.)

--Publishers Weekly: Starred Review

"A brutally honest book...akin to being the "Angela's Ashes" of the modern Mexican immigrant experience."--LA Times

"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."--Slate

"A timely and a vivid example of how poverty and immigration can destroy a family."--The Daily Beast

"Grande consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence."--Kirkus Reviews

“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.” —Sonia Nazario, Pulitzer Prize winner, and author of Enrique's Journey

Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this “compelling . . . unvarnished, resonant” (BookPage) story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries. As her parents make the dangerous trek across the Mexican border to “El Otro Lado” (The Other Side) in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced into the already overburdened household of their stern grandmother. When their mother at last returns, Reyna prepares for her own journey to “El Otro Lado” to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years, her long-absent father.

Funny, heartbreaking, and lyrical, The Distance Between Us poignantly captures the confusion and contradictions of childhood, reminding us that the joys and sorrows we experience are imprinted on the heart forever, calling out to us of those places we first called home.

Also available in Spanish as La distancia entre nosotros.