A Dream Called Home

“Where are you from?”

This seemingly innocent question is highly fraught when a white person asks it of a person of color. Reyna is unsure how to respond when her college roommate, Carolyn, asks her where she is from. Like many immigrants, Reyna’s sense of identity is complex, encompassing her place of birth, nationality, culture, the city where she currently lives, and other factors. The question underscores Reyna’s foreignness, prompting her to raise her guard. 

“Having the name Reyna Grande, ‘the big queen,’ when you are only five feet tall sets you up for a lifetime of ridicule.” 

This quote addresses a key theme in Reyna’s memoir: identity. Reyna is apprehensive when her Theory and Interpretation professor takes roll call at the end class, bracing herself for ridicule. Instead, her professor calls out the name Renée Grand. As embarrassed as she is about her name, she resists its anglicization. Reyna longs to live up to the grandiose name her mother gave her at birth. Fearing that person will disappear if she reinvents herself as Renée Grand, she approaches her professor after class and corrects his pronunciation. 

“Because I was a child immigrant, my identity was split; I often felt like an outcast for not being completely Mexican but not fully American either. The border was still inside me. Physically I had crossed it, but psychologically I was still running across that no-man’s-land. I was still caught back there, and so were my parents because the truth was that we were never the same after we crossed the border.” 

This passage describes Reyna’s dual identity, a critical issue for many immigrants. Reyna feels like an outsider, no matter where she is. Her family in Mexico treats her differently than everyone else. Similarly, she faces bias and discrimination in the US. The US-Mexico border divides Reyna’s past from her present, making her feel like she is caught between two worlds.

“When I was a child, I had been able to see past the imperfections and find the beauty of my hometown, but now, after all my years of living in the U.S., I no longer could.” 

The contrast between Iguala and Los Angeles is stark. The former is a small, impoverished town with a primitive infrastructure, while the latter is a bustling metropolis where money and opportunities abound. With no means of comparison, Reyna saw the beauty of Iguala as a child. She sees the town through fresh eyes during her first trip back as an adult. There is no longer anything beautiful to her about the wood shacks, dirt roads, and piles of trash lining the streets.

“Her moonlit eyes looked at me with so much hope and innocence, I knew she wanted me to paint a different picture–a different reality–than the one we were living. But there was no point in what-ifs. There was no point in wishing our family’s past away.” 

Reyna knows it is impossible to change the past. Through hard work and education, however, she is confident she can have a better future. By contrast, Betty does not understand that the power to change her life is in her hands. She is incapable of taking personal responsibility and instead looks to Reyna to fix her problems. 

“What would she say if I told her that I rejected any religion that made me feel devalued as a woman, or which pressed upon me the belief that being poor was a good thing, or that all the misery in my life was God’s will and I should shut up and not complain?” 

Reyna was a devout Catholic when she lived in Mexico. She loses her religion after immigrating to the US, yet she attends church with Abuelita Chinta during her first trip back to Iguala. This quote describes some of the reasons Reyna rejected Catholicism. Her grandmother’s faith, however, reminds her of a time when she believed that God was protecting her. 

“It isn’t melodrama. It’s your truth.” 

This quote underscores the importance of female mentorship. Reyna’s advanced fiction professor at UCSC criticizes her writing, calling it over-the-top and full of clichés. With Marta’s help, however, Reyna realizes that her stories are not melodramatic. Like Juan Rulfo and Tomás Rivera, Reyna writes about her reality, which is far darker than her advanced fiction professor imagines.

“How many words would I have to write to build my dream house?”

Reyna wants nothing more than to be a professional writer and to buy her dream house. She is silent when Betty asks how people can afford the magnificent houses on Westcliff Drive in Monterey. Although she is confident hard work will eventually yield success, in this quote, she wonders exactly how much writing it will take to get there. 

“For the first time, I understood that what I wanted for her–to do well in school, to go to college one day–wasn’t what she wanted for herself. I could not give my dreams to her. She would have to find her own.” 

Resilience and drive are key aspects of Reyna’s personality. Her desire to have a better life at times clouds her judgment, as evidenced by her relationship with Betty. Reyna does everything in her power to help Betty stay in school: She gives her sister a home after their mother sends her to Iguala, builds her confidence, and keeps her on track academically. Despite her efforts, Betty cuts class and has unprotected sex with Omar. After months of effort, Reyna realizes that she and Betty do not share the same goals, and that it is up to her sister to decide what she wants out of life.

“There are colloquialisms unique to our upbringing and the places where we’ve lived. To be ashamed of how you speak is to be ashamed of where you’re from.” 

This passage highlights the importance of female mentors in Reyna’s life. Marta plays a central role in helping Reyna embrace Mexican culture. Her words comfort Reyna, who is ashamed of the way she speaks Spanish. This quote also addresses immigrant identity. Reyna’s mother tongue is Spanish, but her grasp of the language is shaky because she immigrated to the US at a young age. 

“It isn’t that you aren’t enough. In fact, the opposite is true.”

Marta’s words mark a critical moment in Reyna’s life. Reyna felt like an outsider throughout her formative years—too Mexican in the US, and too American in Mexico. Marta makes her realize that people in Mexico treat her differently because she is, in fact, different. Bilingual, bicultural, and binational, Reyna is more, not less than the people around her. 

“This isn’t my dream house […] It’s someone else’s.” 

Reyna yearns for a dream house, but she is unwilling to compromise her personal and professional goals to get one. She declines Gabe’s invitation to move into the beautiful house he built in the forest because his desires do not align with her goals. Although she is tempted by the offer, Reyna knows she has to pave her own path.

“I knew Betty needed to be a great mom, because that was the only way to heal the little girl inside of her. Giving her child the kind of mother she, herself, had never had was how she would make things right and ease the pain.” 

Good and bad parenting are recurring issues in Reyna’s memoir. Reyna tries to be a mother figure to Betty by taking her in after their mother sends her to live in Iguala. Although Reyna is unable to keep Betty on the right track, she serves as a positive role model for her sister. The time Betty spends at Reyna’s introduces her to good parenting, a lesson she then applies to raising her children.

“I discovered this female artist who had done what I was trying to do–turn her pain into art.” 

Reyna is taken with Frida Kahlo from the moment she sees prints of her paintings in Erica’s apartment. She feels a deep kinship with Frida, who overcame adversity to become the most famous Mexican painter in the world. She has a particular affinity for Las Dos Fridas because it reflects the same cultural duality that Reyna feels.

“As a woman of color and immigrant, I knew what it was like to be marginalized, to have to prove constantly how American I was, always to have to fight for my right to remain.”

Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston is an important role model for Reyna. Houston’s work resonates with Reyna, both because she is a woman of color and because she makes a living writing about the immigrant experience. Houston’s most celebrated text is Farewell to Manzanar, a memoir about her family’s time in internment camps during the Second World War. Like Houston, Reyna struggles to hold on to her heritage while also navigating American culture.

“A job is a job.” 

Norma advises Reyna to apply for a job as a seasonal worker in a clothing store after college. Although Norma is much younger than Reyna, she is wise beyond her years. She reminds Reyna that the retail job is only temporary, and that doors will soon open if she is patient and perseveres.

“All I thought about was the salary. With that kind of money, I could rent my own place, buy a new car, pay my bills, and put an end to Mago’s and Carlos’s mocking. I would finally have something to show for this college education I had worked so hard to get.” 

This passage addresses the first major compromise Reyna makes on the road to becoming a professional writer. Teaching is not her dream job, but student debt and mounting bills compel her to accept a position at a local middle school. The job also allows Reyna to defend herself against family members who tease her about having a useless degree. 

“Their stories were so similar to my own. Broken homes, broken families–that was the price we all had paid for a shot at the American Dream.” 

Education plays a critical role in Reyna’s life. Graduating from college is key to her professional success. In addition, she makes ends meet by teaching before becoming a professional writer. Her sixth-grade ESL students are much like her: immigrants or children of immigrants from broken homes. Reyna is an effective teacher because she empathizes with her students. She understands that their needs go beyond learning English, and that each has been traumatized by their experiences.

“Life hadn’t just given me lemons; it had given me a whole lemon grove.” 

Reyna draws inspiration from the experiences of other immigrants like Kahlil Gibran, an American writer of Lebanese descent. Reyna is moved by Kahlil’s insights about joy and sorrow. His words help her make peace with the hardships she endured by casting sorrow as a prerequisite for immense joy. For Reyna, that joy coincides with the birth of her son.

“This was the first time I’d considered that my experiences might be things to celebrate, rather than be ashamed of. Was is possible that everything I had gone through had shaped me into a unique individual with a unique voice?” 

Female mentors play a central role in Reyna’s life. María helps Reyna find and celebrate her voice by stressing that everyone communicates in unique ways based on their life experiences. Moreover, this insight gives Reyna the opportunity to transmute her trauma and suffering into something productive, like art.

“I didn’t live in Disneyland, but I did live in a magical place.”

This quote emphasizes Reyna’s otherness in the eyes of her relatives in Mexico. During a visit to Iguala, Diana asks if Reyna lives in Disneyland. Reyna’s response reveals an awareness of how lucky she is to have immigrated, despite the hardships it caused.

“I went home thinking about the duality of being an immigrant, our split identities, the cleaving of our hearts and bodies–half of our heart remained in our homeland, the other was here with us. One foot remained rooted in our native soil while with our other foot we dug into American soil to anchor ourselves and weather the storm.” 

Reyna’s dream of being a writer, and the obstacles she overcame to make this dream come true, are unique. However, many aspects of her memoir broadly reflect the experiences of immigrants. This quote relates to Reyna’s friend Rosa, an undocumented Mexican working in the US under a false identity. Rosa tells Reyna how difficult it is to have two names. The experience makes her question who she is, a feeling Reyna knows well.

“And as I sat on the patio with my child and the man that I loved, the casita rising about us, I realized that for the second time in my life, my father had built me a house, but I was the one building myself a home.” 

Reyna is committed to giving her son a loving home. By contrast, her father prioritized building his family a house. The main reason he left Iguala was to make enough money to build a brick and concrete dream house, a move that tore his family apart. When he builds a pergola over the patio, Reyna finally understands that she and her father express love differently. He focuses on being a good provider, while she prioritizes creating a loving environment.