The Hangout with David Sciarretta
Conversations with interesting people.
The Hangout with David Sciarretta
#108: Acclaimed Author Reyna Grande on Voice, Resilience and Belonging
Reyna Grande is a Mexican‑American novelist and memoirist whose work brings raw clarity to the immigrant experience, family separation, and the pursuit of belonging. Born in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico, and having crossed into the U.S. as an undocumented child, Grande earned her BA and MFA in creative writing, and is a recipient of multiple awards including the American Book Award, the International Latino Book Award and the El Premio Aztlán Literary Award.
Grande’s major works include:
• Across a Hundred Mountains (2006) – a novel rooted in her own journey from Mexico to the U.S. as a child.
• Dancing with Butterflies (2009) – a novel exploring identity, trauma, and cultural memory.
• The Distance Between Us (2012) – a powerful memoir of her life before and after immigrating, which was also adapted into a young‑reader edition.
• A Dream Called Home (2018) – the sequel memoir continuing her story of striving, belonging and returning.
• A Ballad of Love and Glory (2022) – a sweeping historical novel set during the Mexican‑American War.
Exploring themes of immigration, identity, language, and the power of storytelling, Grande’s voice is profound and deeply human.
Learn more at reynagrande.com
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Welcome to the Hangout Podcast. I'm your host, David Sheretta. Come on in and hang out. In this episode, I was honored and privileged to have a conversation with Reina Grande. Reina is an acclaimed author whose powerful memoirs, The Distance Between Us, and A Dream Called Home illuminate the realities of undocumented childhood immigration from Mexico to the US. Her work delves into themes of family separation, language trauma, and the pursuit of the American dream. In 2025, A Dream Called Home was named one of the best books of the 21st century by Kirkis Reviews. Grande is also the author of the novels Across a Hundred Mountains, Dancing with Butterflies, and the historical epic A Ballad of Love and Glory that is set during the Mexican-American War. We cover a wide range of topics and themes in this illuminating conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Welcome, Reina. Thank you so much for taking time this afternoon for this conversation.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, thank you. I'm very excited to be here talking with you.
SPEAKER_02:I thought we could we could start where I like to start with all of these conversations, which is with our origins. Uh our origin story. So if you could share a bit about who you are, where you come from, both literally and figuratively. And then we'll I know much has been written about that, so uh, and then we'll we'll go from there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, thank you so much. Um, okay, well, my origin story begins in Mexico. I was born in the state of Guerrero in a city called Iguala de la Independencia. And my father left uh Guerrero when I was two years old to come to the US, and my mother left when I was four to join my father here in California. So my childhood in Guerrero was was a pretty difficult one because I didn't have a father or a mother, and my siblings and I were left behind um with my grandparents. And I would say that my childhood is mostly defined by the fear of being forgotten or abandoned or replaced. Um and so when I think of my childhood in Guerrero, it's definitely with a lot of sadness, but also some nostalgia, you know, because as difficult as life was there, there were also some beautiful things that that I miss about living there in Mexico. Um, so when I was nine, my father came back and he brought me and my siblings to California with him. And so I crossed the border when I was nine years old there through the Tijuana-San Diego border. And I arrived in Los Angeles, I started fifth grade, and it was a very difficult time for me because I had to adjust to not just, you know, the challenges of being an immigrant in the United States, like learning a language, uh learning a new culture, a new way of life. But what I would what was difficult for me was coming to live with my father, whom I hadn't seen since I was two years old. And so family separation and the trauma of that separation is something that definitely has lingered all this time. And it's something that I write a lot about in my books, because that is something that that is not included in the conversations when we talk about immigration, is how it impacts the family unit and the trauma, you know, that children especially have to live with. So that's my origin story, you know. I'm an immigrant here in California, um, English language learner, uh first gen student. I was the first in my family to graduate from university. And now I'm really fortunate to have a career as a storyteller. Um reading and writing were my passions as a young girl, and they continue to be my passions to this day, and I'm just really, really fortunate and blessed to be making a living from my art and to get to tell stories that center my Latino community.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for that. And your name came to me kind of through a number of different avenues, but resoundingly through middle school students here at Albert Einstein Academy's work where I work. Uh the distance between us is uh favorite in the in the school library, and so um you know that's that your name kept popping up over and over, and so you've definitely had an impact um and continue to. So thank you for for sharing that. I I as I look at you here, and obviously this is an audio podcast, but we're recording this on video, you have you're wearing monarch butterfly earrings. And I know that from some of my research and and seeing some presentations you've done um and some readings you've done, the the monarch butterfly has significance to you and your experience. Can you can you share that um for the listeners?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I really love monarch butterflies. Um, they have become a symbol for the immigrant community because as we know, you know, migration is not a crime, it's an act of survival, and we see that in in all in all all over, right? Like in in um animals and these beautiful insects that migrate and humans migrate too, and we do it as an act of survival, as um out of necessity. So for me, the monarch butterfly is such a beautiful symbol of migration. And when I was in Los Angeles, when I used, you know, was living in Los Angeles, I had this really beautiful garden, a butterfly garden, and my daughter and I started uh taking care of the monarch butterflies that would come to live in our garden. We actually ended up um racing monarchs, like over a hundred butterflies. And it was such a beautiful experience for my daughter because it was my way of teaching her about migration, about her roots. Um, it was a way to share a little bit of myself and my experiences. And so now, you know, I I have a butterfly tattoo now. I don't know if you can you can see my butterfly tattoo, but yeah, I'm all into butterflies. Although I have to say that um for for my my book uh Somewhere We Are Human, which came out three years ago, it's an anthology of immigrant voices. And I co-edited the book with um Sonia Gignanzaka, who is a poet. And when we were thinking about the cover, we decided not to have uh monarch butterflies on the cover, even though our book was about the immigrant community and immigrant voices. We decided instead to go with the dandelion as a symbol for migration, because one of the things we realized or we thought about was how everybody loves butterflies, right? So the monarch butterfly as a migrant, um, everybody loves the monarch. We want to protect the monarch, you know. Um, but with dandelions, people hate dandelions and they're always trying to kill the dandelions in their gardens. Yeah, they're seen as wheat. They're seen as a wheat, but they're actually like beneficial plants, right? They're medicinal plants that have a lot of benefits, and we don't acknowledge the benefits of the dandelion. Um, it is it has been very maligned, um, and so we're always trying to get rid of it. And so we decided that the dandelion actually was a better symbol for the way that immigrants are treated in this country. That, you know, this country uh oftentimes doesn't see the benefit that we immigrants provide to the society, and they're constantly trying to get rid of us, but here we are, you know, and the dandelion is uh a very, very resilient and very determined to survive. So the dandelion has also become my favorite symbol for migration.
SPEAKER_02:You might need another tattoo.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna need a tattoo of the dandelion.
SPEAKER_02:The dandelion. One of the things that struck me about in in doing doing research and looking at some of your writings, uh, you wrote a piece for CNN about subtractive bilingualism. And it kind of stemmed from, I think you were watching an awards show or the Oscars or something where where where for the first time actors were speaking in Spanish.
SPEAKER_01:Diego Luna spoke in Spanish. Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And he said, he said, you know, we're here and we're not going anywhere. Um and so you wrote this piece. Talk to us about the piece and and really what you were expressing there.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, I mean, that's one of the things that I write about is my language trauma. Because when I arrived in the US and I started school in California Public School, fifth grade, I went to a school that did not have a bilingual program. It didn't really have resources for immigrant children. And so it was mostly a sink or swim situation. And my teacher didn't speak Spanish much. And um, she basically just, you know, pointed to the corner of her classroom and sent me there. And that was like my first time feeling voiceless and feeling invisible. Um, and so, you know, through the years as a young girl, I I didn't want to spend my life in the corner feeling voiceless and invisible. And so I worked very hard to learn English, but it came at the at the cost of my Spanish because after I left Mexico, I never really had any a formal education in Spanish. Everything was in English, and the message that I received in my classrooms was that I needed to learn English, and everything had to be in English, all my reading, my writing, my speaking, um, everything. So then instead of learning a new language or adding a new language, I was actually losing a language. I was losing my mother tongue, and that's why, you know, it's called the term is subtractive bilingualism, and and I hadn't I hadn't heard of that term until I was an adult. And I realized that, yeah, that's what happened to me. I was replacing my mother tongue with English. So I wasn't really becoming bilingual. I was losing my connection to to my country, my connection to my culture and to my mother. And so it was uh uh uh it was a very traumatic experience the way I learned English. And it wasn't until I was an adult that I started to be more proactive in like trying to get my Spanish back. I started taking Spanish classes, and then I began to translate my own work into Spanish as a way to teach myself um Spanish. But it's still, you know, it's it the consequences are still something that I see, you know, every day. Like, for example, I because of my language trauma, I didn't teach um Spanish to my children, and that is something that I deeply regret every single day. I regret it. My son does not speak Spanish beyond level one. My daughter uh also didn't speak Spanish, but then when we moved to Northern California, the local school had a dual language immersion program. And I put her in that program and she became bilingual because of that program, not because of me, but because of that program. And so now my daughter is uh is a senior in high school and she's gonna get her seal of biliteracy from the state of California when she graduates. And so that makes me really happy, and it also makes me happy to know that these programs, like you know, the dual language um immersion programs uh exist because children are able to become bilingual in uh in a way that is not traumatic, you know, in a way where they're not forced to sacrifice anything about themselves. So they are becoming bilingual in in the right sense, right? They are adding a language, they're not subtracting a language. They are be they are l more, not less. And so to me that that that makes me really happy to know that my daughter's bilingualism um has come in a way where she has not had to sacrifice anything about who she is.
SPEAKER_02:And if I'm not mistaken, she was you you were on a trip to Mexico, she was speaking to your relatives and really relishing the experience. I think this was when she was younger, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like six months after I put her in that dual language immersion program. Um six months after I took her to Mexico for the Christmas holiday, and not only was she speaking Spanish to my relatives, she was also singing the the Spanish Christmas songs because she had learned them at school. And she was so happy because we would go to the Posadas and she was able to sing along to those songs.
SPEAKER_02:Kind of a full full circle moment for your family in some ways, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:On the topic of family separation, uh, you know, I had asked, or actually they asked me, a number of our students wanted me to ask you some questions because I think that that resonates so deeply with students and with children, right? Anybody thinking about one or two of their parents leaving with an with an you know no idea about when they're coming back. And yours, for you it happened in it, this is before you know WhatsApp and FaceTime, so you might go months and months with no news. Um, one of the uh middle school girls asked, How how could you still love your parents after being put through that experience? That's coming from a 13-year-old.
SPEAKER_01:Wow, that is, yeah, that's uh that's such a tough question. I mean, I have been working on that for a long time, you know, because I have come to understand my parents in a way that I didn't when I was a young girl. Um I think as I have matured, my understanding has also matured, and I see that my parents were also put in very difficult situations, you know. Um they were victims of poverty and inequality and oppression, and they were forced to make choices that no parent in the world should ever have to make, which is to leave their children behind and go to another country so that they could find a way to provide for them, right? And so for me, like I yes, I went through a period where I felt um angry and resentful, but then I learned to understand and to have more compassion for my parents. And that also, you know, came later when I became a mother myself, when I look at my children, and every day I am so grateful that I don't have to make the tough choices my parents had to make. That I get to, you know, be with my kids because I'm able to provide for them. I don't I am not in a situation where I have to make desperate decisions that are gonna tra traumatize my kids for the rest of their lives, you know. And so I have so much more compassion for my parents. Um I have a lot of love for them because I understand that they didn't have the resources to get help, you know, and that they were not able to break from our intergenerational trauma. Um they also suffered a lot. And I think that if they had received some help, maybe that it would help them to be better parents. So that those are the kinds of things that I've learned to understand and and also I I don't just forgive and understand for my parents, I'm doing it for my children as well, because I don't want to show up damaged, you know. I don't want to show up with all this trauma and dump it on my kids. And so I know that I need to work on my feelings. I need to develop, um, I need to work towards having a healthier relationship with my parents so that then I can have a healthier relationship with my children. So I'm doing the work for the for my kids. Um, and that's how we break cycles, right? And that for me has been a priority to break those cycles and to work on myself so that I'm not passing on that that baggage to my kids, and I'm not making my kids suffer because of my pain and my trauma.
SPEAKER_02:It's a really profound way of thinking about your legacy, right? We all often think about what's our legacy for our kids. I think when we say that, most people are thinking it's a in a material sense, right? Like yours is actually uh the way you express it is a is real spiritual and internal and a paradigm shift. Um in in thinking about the the generations, um I can't stop thinking about your grandma. I think it's a your paternal paternal grandma, right? Uh Annie Guala, and I I saw in one of the YouTube videos, I think in my mind I'd made her like this giant figure physically, right? And she's tiny.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. Oh, you're talking about my maternal grandmother.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, they're both tiny. Okay, so so maybe I'm mixing the two. Who which was it paternal grandma was the one that you that was my evil grandma, evil grandma, right? Yes, and so when I think about even you know, when people turn out evil, but however we define that, there's a there's that trauma background, I'm sure, to that as well, right? And so then that gets passed on to your dad, and you know, it just yes. Um I that was something that I think was really both powerful and also refreshing about especially the distance between us, is it's not an idealized version of the the welcoming grandma in Mexico who's like, okay, kids, let's get up and we're gonna make tamales today or whatever. It was like a that was like really rough survival on the on the edge of not making it. Can you talk a little bit about that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, well, uh yeah, so I have my my two grandmothers. Um I recently posted a picture on my Instagram of my maternal grandmother, who's my sweet grandmother.
SPEAKER_02:Not the evil one. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:I don't really post about the evil ones. Uh no, but my maternal grandmother, she was very, very kind. She was very poor, um, but she had a lot of love. And so even though we we were, you know, we didn't really have much food to eat, we we definitely had a lot of love for my grandmother. And that made things a little better for us. With my paternal grandmother, she was not very kind to us when we lived with her. She mistreated us a lot, and she uh would spend the money, you know, that my parents would send for us. She would spend it on other things, and so she just made life so much harder at a time when what we needed was some love and support, you know. And and so I definitely had to work very hard on like forgiving my grandma and understanding her and trying to like, you know, give her some love because I know that she also had a very difficult life. And I think that my father, you know, he suffered a lot with her too. And so he kind of recreated a lot of the the toxic the toxicity in his home, in his childhood home, he kind of recreated that with us. And so I I kind of wish he had worked harder to not do that, but um sometimes, you know, the abused children become the abusive parents, right? Um yeah, and with my maternal grandmother, I feel that I love her so much, and that is something that really, really hurt me when when I came to California. One of the things I lost when I immigrated was my relationship with my grandmother because I didn't see her very much after I left. It took me almost eight years to come back to Mexico when I saw her again. And then after that, I saw her maybe three more times, and then she passed away when I was in my mid-20s. And so that's a great sorrow for me, you know, having lost that relationship that I really treasure with my grandmother. But what I posted on my Instagram the other day was that even though my grandmother has been gone from my life for many, many years, uh, she's always with me because I write so much about her. And she has appeared in almost all my books. You know, whether I'm writing a novel or I'm writing my memoirs, there she is, you know, my my grandmother shows up. And so it's a beautiful thing that I have seen with writing, is that it really helps me to stay connected with my my ancestors and with, you know, the people that are no longer here physically with me, but they're in my heart. And so I get to bring them back to life through my writing. And I I find that to be such a beautiful thing that a gift that my writing has given me.
SPEAKER_02:I think I recall you saying, and in a maybe it was a speech that you gave where you said that some people write memoirs based on their memories, but that someone who was inspirational to you, maybe it was a professor or a teacher or coach, mentor, said that they write their memoirs based on the things that they would rather forget. So difficult, difficult things, things that we've we've perhaps uh suppressed, um, etc. How do you handle that experience, the memoir writing experience, or write writing a novel for that matter, because they they seem to they seem to be you know cross-pollinating at all times, anyway, is what you as you just described. How do you handle that emotionally uh and work your way through it? I'm just interested at that from that writing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so so so the what you're talking about is um advice that Sandra Cisneros, who is my my literary godmother, uh my inspiration, she the advice that she gives is is that um we should write about the things we wish we could forget. And that is something that I feel I've been doing since I was a teenager, because everything I write are the things that I wish I could forget, because they're very painful, painful things, right? And that's why like my writing practice has been very tied to my trauma in a way where mostly what I write about are very traumatic experiences that I've gone through. But the reason why I've done that is because my writing has been, you know, therapy for me. It's my way of processing all this trauma, it's my way of um trying to find healing by understanding the things that I've gone through. It has really helped me to um transform my trauma instead of letting my trauma transform me, like I'm transforming it into works of art that I can then share with other people. And it's very difficult to write memoir or even fiction, you know, because a lot of fiction tends to be autobiographical, and so, or at least my fiction, um, when I write, I'm trying to process these things that happen to me and to and to understand why they happen and to learn to really learn the lessons that these experiences have taught me. And I have to confront them as painful as they are. And it's almost like like having thorns, you know, like you have all these thorns stuck on your flesh, and what you're doing is you gotta pull them out. And as you're pulling them out, it really hurts. But once you yank them out and the pain subsides, you feel better. And now you don't have to, you know, carry that thorn um with you. So that's kind of how I see writing memoir, is that when I'm writing these very painful memories, I'm pulling out the thorns. And yes, it's gonna hurt. Uh in the act of of writing, it's gonna hurt, but once they're out, they're out, and then they're no longer hurting me anymore. So I'm basically um no longer giving them the power to continue to hurt me, and and that's what I really love about about writing down all these things that I have gone through.
SPEAKER_02:You you talk about the fact that after you graduated from from college and and really where you honed your your the craft, the writing craft, that the piece that they hadn't yet taught you was about the per the profession, the how to get published, the navigating that whole piece and I think if I recall correctly your first uh I don't know if there were query letters or whatever you set out like 30 or so came back with you tell tell the story because I'm gonna get the facts wrong.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah well it was my first novel.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Yeah it was your first novel. So you you you had written it and and I I think it someone flippantly said you're a good writer but no one wants to read a book about a Mexican.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah nobody's gonna care.
SPEAKER_02:No one's gonna care.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um so so talk about that and then how you how like how do how does someone how do you overcome that?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah uh I think because I I grew up with rejection I learned how to um not let it you know bring me down so much. Uh I but yeah when I was a young writer I was you know um 27 around there I found an agent who started sending out my first novel to editors and 26 of them rejected the novel. Number 27 came back and said yes I want to publish this book and that was like one of the happiest days of my life you know when I when I got that yes um but yeah no one of the things that is difficult for for writers for aspiring writers is really knowing about the business side right a lot of times you know we focus a lot on our craft and it's our art we're making art but once we we we want to get published it's very challenging because a lot of times we don't have the knowledge or the resources or the net you know the connections to help us get our works published and the publishing industry unfortunately is not very diverse and so for writers of color it can be quite challenging knocking on those doors and getting a lot of rejections. And then for immigrant writers you know it's very challenging and oftentimes we are told that people don't really want any more immigrant stories or that people are not going to care about immigrant stories. And so that's what I heard when I was trying to get my first novel published and my first novel was about a young immigrant girl looking for her missing father. It was somewhat autobiographical although what I was exploring in that novel was not so much the life that I had lived but more like the life I might have lived if my father had never come back for me. Because that is something that haunts me to this day when I ask myself like where would I be now if my father had not come back for me you know and so I try to imagine like in in the multiverse right these different versions of my life playing out if things had been different. And so in Across 100 Mountains I ended up writing a story of a young girl whose father comes to the United States to look for work and he disappears so he doesn't come back and she ends up having to leave her hometown and go look for him. And she's basically an unaccompanied minor right coming to the border by herself and she's trying to find her father and and uh reunite with her father. So that was a story that I had written and it was inspired by my fear as a little girl that my father wouldn't come back and that he would forget me and that I would never see him again. So that book is actually turning 20 next year. It's celebrating its 20th anniversary and I'm gonna be celebrating 20 years of being a professional writer. It's been such a wonderful journey. I feel very proud of the books that I have published and I am finishing two books right now that are gonna come out next year. And so yeah that has been my trajectory as a writer and I'm gonna be turning 50 in a few days and so I'm also starting a new journey as a 50 year old. So a lot of things have happened in my life that I'm really really grateful for. And so I'm starting this new decade of my life with a lot of gratitude.
SPEAKER_02:You you talked about in one of your interviews this term of being an emerging writer right like I think it was after your first book and they said hey congratulations you're an emerging writer and then you became a something else writer there were like adjectives that were attached to them right and so at what point did you did you really go wow like I've arrived this is I am I'm a professional writer um I'm being sought out to speak and and and you know just like at what point like just also given given everything you'd gone through in your life as you as you reference the amount of rejection yeah right just for forget about the publishing industry that was that's low rejection compared to the other rejection that you faced right so like at what point did you get to go wow I've really I've arrived I don't know if I feel that way yet I mean you know I still feel that I'm still an emerging writer uh but yeah some years ago I think it was after my my fourth book was published that I I still kept calling myself an emerging writer and then a friend of mine said Raina you have emerged I was like no I don't I'm still emerging um but no like now I know people see me as an established writer and I haven't quite wrapped my head around that one like I feel that I still have a ways to go to feel established but I and maybe that's the the nature of art it right like like there's always that that little edge of it where you're like I never like completely get there because I'm not supposed to completely get there.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe it's the journey right right yeah no and I and that that has been the case for me because I I always feel like I'm always learning about writing you know every book teaches me something new about writing so I never feel that oh I know everything about you know about my art and it's like I'm gonna be a lifelong learner I want to keep writing so I can keep learning more about being a storyteller about you know the craft I want to get better I I do want to one day look back and feel that I am established. But I think um I also want to stay humble you know have humility and know that my writing is not perfect that I could do better next time and I'm always striving to do better next time.
SPEAKER_02:This is another question from one of the the students um where I work what advice would you if you could go back in time what advice would you give your I think you were nine when you first crossed into California right am I do I have that right? Yeah what advice would you give now knowing what you know as you're approaching the the the half century mark um what would you tell that nine year old why would I tell her I mean I would tell her that everything is going to be okay that she just needs to stay strong hold on to her dreams she's gonna make mistakes and that's okay that's part of life and as long as she keeps going you know she's gonna get rerouted once in a while she's gonna lose her way but as long as she always comes back to her path she's going to be just fine actually she's gonna be more than fine she's gonna be amazing I I had to chuckle uh there's that scene in in Distance Between Us where you think you just crossed the border and you're driving and you want to go to McDonald's you saw the golden arches you're like peeking out and I think I know which one that is it's in San Isidro there's a McDonald's right there and that they that they the the uh the guy the man who was helping smuggle you guys across gave you sunflower seeds and you're like really I'm coming to the richest uh the richest country in the world and you've heard all these idealist idealistic things um uh and you're giving me bird feed um so obviously that was a a little bit of a of a comical uh piece there but in all seriousness what parts of of the the idealized experience in the US um were completely not what you experienced them to be if that makes sense so you'd grown up it sounds like you heard all these stories right like like I think it was a cousin who said look see these dollars like yeah my aunt and also look at they're growing on the trees everywhere like all you need to do is just shake the tree how much of your experience I mean you've spoken very lovingly about the United States and and um as well as about Mexico but what parts of the experience in the US were so different from the idealized part?
SPEAKER_01:I mean well yeah when my aunt was telling us that the trees here grow dollars for leaves that was such a lie um and that is something that a lot of immigrants come here thinking that they're gonna make a lot of you know money and then go home and build their houses and have a great life but when they come here they realize that life is very expensive in the United States, you know, and that dollars don't go as far as they thought they would and then they have to work two, three jobs to be able to support themselves and their families and to be able to send money back to their home countries. Many of them you know have to cram into like small apartments just so that they could afford the rent and they have to share um a room with a bunch of people and like it's just like really difficult and and that is something that they don't talk about back home, right? Back in our countries like there's this romanticized um story that about what life is going to be like when you get here and they don't talk about how difficult it is to survive here in this country. You know it's like I'm nine years old and all of a sudden now I'm a criminal because I crossed the border without permission just because I wanted to live with my father, you know and so um like dealing with that that that was not part of my identity right that I was an quote unquote illegal alien. That was very traumatic and then also um being uh uh racialized in a way like I hadn't been in Mexico like all of a sudden now I'm hyper aware of my skin color and my you know my name and and um just my cultural identity was constantly being criticized and then I had to I started to develop this shame and and this inferiority because I was a brown Mexican Spanish speaking kid. So like those things I feel like you know we don't really talk a lot about um in Mexico and even to this day you know even to this day like recently I was uh I went to Mexico um in May to participate in a conference and we were talking about you know Latino artists in in the US and I'm and and not just Latino artists but like Latinos in different sectors of society and I mentioned um at the conference how only like in the in in the publishing industry only about 7% of authors are Latino that in the film industry you know only about like 5% 6% of actors with leading roles are Latino only about 6% are you know lawyers or physicians or engineers or you know it like the percentage is so low. And and people in Mexico when I mentioned those those um numbers they were completely shocked and and that was something that they don't think about right of how what it's like to um be in a place where you have to live under all this systemic oppression where we are not you know welcome in certain spaces where we fight constantly have to be fighting for a seat at the table. You know um I was I I don't I don't know if you you read an article that I I wrote some years ago um for the Washington Post where I mentioned how I had gone to a party for authors it was a literary gala at the Library of Congress and I was mistaken for a waitress. And and and so like you know like so that's what like I talk about like living here in the United States we we're constantly you know being being forced to fight for our right to take up space. And there's a lot of obstacles that we have to overcome and that is something that people in Mexico and you know Latin America don't seem to understand the challenges that we Latinos are facing in in this country.
SPEAKER_02:It's almost like the way it's presented is just a one-dimensional view of the US probably a lot of based on media representations right like the the material wealth side of things like you can do this and if you're in this profession. In in a lot of my travels in Latin America I always get the question oh I'm a I'm a carpenter I'm a such and such how much would I earn in the United States? Like and as you say there's a lot of context that gets lost in that calculation. Right it's like you know yeah yeah you can earn five times as much or ten times as much and then wait till you see how life is like where you have to live who you have to live with what opportunities you will not have access to readily you know so well I'm gonna say though like something my mother used to say was that I'll rather be poor here than in Mexico.
SPEAKER_01:She would say that all the time I would rather be poor here than in Mexico. And you know she's right because yeah I mean as poor as you are here in the United States you're never gonna be as poor as you were back in your country you know I mean it's just and also like um I think a lot of immigrants are willing to put up with all those challenges here for their kids, right? For the next generation. That that's really the American dream. It's not so much for themselves, it's for their children. And so they are willing to make those sacrifices because they want their kids to have a shot and so I understand I understand that you know and and it's it's um it's something that is so admirable in the immigrant community the the lengths that they go through the sacrifices they make all everything they're willing to do without as long as their kids have a chance.
SPEAKER_02:You've been very generous with your time and I know we had talked about um you know wrapping this up in in less than an hour but I before I have one last question for you but I wanted to see if there's anything that I have not touched on that maybe kind of jumping around in your mind as we had this conversation that you think no no I'll I'll take the questions you have from the students. Are these from the students or no no this no this one was a hypothetical one for me. The two from the students were what would you what would you tell your um your young self and then how could you how could you love your family still um to this day um but I I wanted to wrap with just a hypothetical and it's it's perhaps a little bit of an odd question to put to an author because you you you write all the time and this is you know you have the you have the the the page as your as your medium but if you had the opportunity to create a billboard we're just going to do this intellectual exercise to create a billboard on the side of the freeway wherever you where you where you live uh what would um what would rena grande's billboard say about what you believe in about um about your views on life as people are driving by most of them are going by at 70 and sometimes they're going by at seven miles an hour when they're in traffic wow that's uh that's a challenging question I mean the first thing that popped in my mind as I was listening to you was don't give up in big big bold letters don't give up um I think sometimes people need to be reminded of that you know because they get overwhelmed with all the challenges that life is throwing their way and I feel like you know as long as we don't give up and we just keep going we're gonna get through it you know we're gonna get through that um and that is something that I tell myself a lot too you know since I was a young girl going through all these challenges that was the one thing I always told myself is don't give up because that is really when when you lose the fight is when you when you give up on yourself.
SPEAKER_01:You know everybody else could give up on you but as long as you don't give up on yourself you will you will succeed you know it's gonna be hard but for me that's an important message.
SPEAKER_02:Well thank you so much it's been an honor it's been a pleasure and and really an inspiration to speak with you and and to hear a little bit about your stories and amplify what's in your books with the real life relating of it. So thank you for generosity um and congratulations on 20 years yeah 20 years 50 years and many more to come thank you so much I really appreciate all your questions I appreciate your students' questions um and yeah and I just want to you know wish them all the best I want to you know encourage them to continue to pursue their dreams to keep going you know keep believing in themselves and to not give up on themselves and in their dreams and on their families thanks for joining us on the Hangout Podcast you can send us an email at podcastinfo at proton.me many thanks to my daughter Maya for editing this episode I'd also like to underline that this podcast is entirely separate from my day job and as such all opinions expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thanks for coming on in and hanging out
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