The Distance between Us by Reyna Grande

People often speak poorly of immigrants because they enter the country without proper paperwork and without authorization, but they never get the chance to share their perspective. The experiences of contemporary Mexican immigrants are covered in Reyna Grande's novel. Reyna wants to be an advocate for the voiceless through her writing. Her memoir is a significant tale reflecting the fact that the majority of people in the United States are immigrants. Immigrants are given the impression that they are not alone and that their amazing and empowering stories count as a result of seeing her experience reflected in American literature. The purpose of this paper is to expound on the effects of immigration and traumatic experiences resulting from the separation between children and parents in order to facilitate immigration.

Effects of immigration trauma

Immigration causes devastating rifts in the lives of the children. In her book, Grande seeks to portray the unrelenting sadness that meets the children whose parents are out of reach although not entirely gone. The book helps people understand immigration complexities, particularly how immigration trauma affects the youth in a way that politicians and the media fail to depict. By writing her own story, Reyna sheds a light on the experiences of immigrant youth.Effects of immigration trauma are both psychological and emotional. The struggle begins even before the crossing the U.S border and setting foot in the country. The separation of families deeply affects children for the rest of their lives. For an immigrant to achieve the American Dream they must have paid the price. For Reyna, dealing with family disintegration was entirely difficult.She recalls wanting “to throw Papi’s photo to the ground and shatter it because she hated him for taking her mother away, just because he wanted a house and a piece of land to call his own”(Grande,13).Immigrants often lose more than they gain. The experiences of immigrant children are highly complicated. In the United States, children have to constantly deal with issues of identity loss, culture deterioration and feeling like they don’t belong. Grande states that “the distance between us and our parents was destroying our relationship more than any of us could have imagined” (Grande, 57).

Grande vividly recalls her childhood with Maya Angelou, as she wondered why parents leave their children to suffer alone with the responsibility they bear for their parent’s temptation to cross the border. Grande’s father in his search for wealth neglects his family leaving Mexico for "El Otro Lado," and he never returns only to call their mother to later join him. This comes as a sigh of relief since men who cross the border often marry new wives and abandon the families they left behind. The United States becomes the evil god that takes parents away from their children. Grande has to endure more torment when her parents split up even before her father got the chance to build his dream house. Their separation involved the children causing an occasional fitful trauma. Grande was taken care of by her fierce sister who was older than her and her maternal grandmother. This testament shows the capacity of siblings to take care of each other, looking out for each other. When Grande was bitten by a scorpion her sister insisted that she be taken to hospital despite her grandmother's views (Grande, 62).However, this protection between siblings had limits.

Cultural trauma in their life experience

Grande relentlessly displays her parents as deeply flawed and the center of all her predicaments. She portrays her father as embittered and her mother as barely reliable. Papi’s only desire was to escape poverty but because of this, he ended up inflicting unimaginable torture on the people he loved the most. Grande’s first day in school at Los Angeles was crucial scene because her name was shortened and the name Rodríguez removed without her consent (Grande,171).A harmful and unnecessary practice usually performed by librarians and educators who are unaware of the disrespectful nature and the effect it has on immigrant children. Failure to recognize their culture, customs and names caused a lot of trauma in this new country. Moreover, they had to struggle to establish their home while being discouraged to neglect their roots, making them feel ashamed of where they came from. Regardless of their legal status, all the children wanted children was some patient and understanding of their immigrant experience.

Mexican memories and shattered dreams lead their father to push his children away using threats and humiliation. He claims that "The minute you walk through the door with anything less than A's, "I'm sending you straight back to my mother's house" (Grande, 166).This scares the children because Grandmother Evila’s house has a scorpion infestation, and she abuses them verbally and dresses them in rags. Further, Natalio hurts them by simply being absent for the first few years of their lives. They have no memories of his only his framed photograph. They refer to him as the "The Man Behind the Glass,"(Grande, 145). The Neighborhood kids also teased Reyna and her siblings calling them orphans when their mother leaves for Los Angeles to reunite with Natalio. Reyna's older sister becomes a surrogate mother for her siblings protecting them from hunger and the society.

Reference

Grande, Reyna. The Distance between Us: A Memoir. First Atria Books hardcover edition. Atria Books, 2012.