La Distancia al Otro Lado (The Distance to the Other Side)

Grande, R. (2012). The Distance between Us: A Memoir. (pp. 1-54). New York, NY: Washington Square Press.

My expectation was that this story would explain the diversity of the places that Reyna and her family were a part of from the perspective of someone who grew up in another country.  I also assumed that this book would give a larger understanding of what Mexico was like through the eyes of someone who grew up there.  Another of my expectations is that I would learn what it is like for immigrant who wish to enter this country and how immigration affects the people who come to this country, for better or for worse.

The book begins with an explanation of the stories that Reyna’s grandmothers would tell her as a child, about a creature called La Llorona that would steal children away if they don’t behave, but then Reyna explains to her readers that there was something far more powerful called El Otro Lado that would take parents, instead (pp. 3-4).  El Otro Lado is explained to mean “The Other Side” and told by Reyna that this was the term for the United States which took many parents away from their kids.  Reyna continues by giving the readers of her book a glimpse into what it was like to grow up as a child in Mexico. 

One of the items that I found the most interesting in this section of the book is on pages 52-54.  On the previous page Reyna and her two siblings see a young boy drop his mango and walk off and leave it on the ground.  Reyna’s sister didn’t have a problem picking it up and eating it but she didn’t want to be seen doing it so Mago tells Reyna to go get it and when she says no that it has been kissed by the devil, Mago states that it is just tales told by their grandmother.  After Reyna’s siblings go back into the school, she begins to question whether the devil is real or not and if the devil is not real then that means that she is not evil.  She then proceeds to take a bite out of the mango that had been on the ground, and once she realized that nothing bad had happened, she goes back to class and picks up her pencil in her left hand.

I believe that this is one of the most important parts of this section of the book because it establishes the views of the culture that Reyna was a part of and it shows the want that she has to be herself.  The cultural view of the society was that left handed people are evil if they use their left hand and they should be punished if they do.  The left handed are expected to conform to the social norms and they are expected to change so they can fit in.  Reyna however wants to be herself and in this section she takes a great risk and is punished for it, but she what she feels is right for her no matter the punishment that she will endure.  

Overall, this section of the book is an explanation of the past that seems to push the book in the direction of her inevitable arrival in America.