|
|||
|
List of Articles:
Reyna Grande, by Linda L. Miller (3-2006)
Crossing the Border: PCC Alumna Goes from Immigrant to Author, by Chantal Mullins (3-2006)
In First Person: Living the American Dream by Reyna Grande
Her Story: Immigration Novel Drew from Writer's Own Journey, by Daniel Olivas
Novel Tracks a Family Split by Immigration, by Yvette Benavides
Beyond the Melodrama by Rick Coca (8-16-06)
Perseverencia y Trabajo Como Llave del Triunfo por Marcos Nelson Suarez (07-30-06)
Grande Education by Nathan Solis (8-28-06)
Living the Writer's Life: Reyna Grande by Melinda Palacio (01-04-07)
Catalina Magazine's Top 5 Books by Latina Authors-Hispanic PR Wire (01-10-07)
Across a Hundred Mountains
By Scott Rappaport (Spring 2007)
"One Program" Book Focuses on Immigration, by Katie Warchut (May 22, 2007
New West Book Review, by Jenny Shank (08-16-07)
UC Santa Cruz alumna receives 2007 American Book Award for first novel by Scott Rappaport
UCSC alumna and author earns prestigious award by Isaiah Guzman - Santa Cruz Sentinel (02/26/2008)
Across a Hundred Mountains
Grande, Reyna (Author)
ISBN: 0743269578
Atria Books
Published 2006-06
Hardcover, $23.00 (272p)
Fiction | General
Reviewed 2006-04-03
PW
starred review
* Grande, a 2003 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow, turns in a topical and heartbreaking border story for her debut. Juana, 11, loses her baby sister in a flood, and the death sets off a chain of tragic events: her money-strapped father heads north from their small Mexican town forel otro lado ; Juana's newborn baby brother is claimed by the town money lender; and Juana's mother descends into alcoholism and violence. At 14, Juana leaves to look for her father, from whom they have heard nothing. On her painstaking journey, she meets Adelina Vasquez, an American runaway working as a prostitute in Tijuana, who takes Juana in. The narrative switches off between young Juana's viewpoint, and that of Andelina, now 31 and a Los Angeles social worker, who returns to Mexico to find her own father and reunite with her mother. Grande's deft portraiture endows even the smallest characters with grace, and the two stories cross and re-cross in unexpected ways, driving toward a powerful conclusion.(June)
Copyright © 1997-2005 Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
El Paso Times Living Sunday, April 16, 2006
Not so alien after all
Timely novel gives human face to immigration
As the public discourse over undocumented immigration becomes more heated and, at times, outright ugly -- particularly in the blogosphere -- attacks on such immigrants are often made in broad strokes and with gross generalizations.
This should not be a surprise, because it is easier to denigrate and reject a group of people if you dehumanize them and make them faceless.
But that's where talented writers come in: With skillful prose, they can focus on a small group of undocumented immigrants and make their struggles and humanity real to the reader so that it becomes difficult to dismiss their plight with a bumper-sticker slogan or the waving of a flag.
Two years ago, Luis Alberto Urrea did exactly that with "The Devil's Highway" (Little, Brown), in which he brilliantly chronicled the plight of 26 Mexican men who, in 2001, crossed the border into an area of the Arizona desert known as the Devil's Highway. Only 12 made it safely across. The book received wide acclaim and was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction.
Now comes a fictionalized story of undocumented immigration in Reyna Grande's debut novel, "Across a Hundred Mountains" (Atria Books, $23). Grande tells her story in evocative language that never falls into pathos.
In the nonlinear narrative, chapters alternate between her two female protagonists, Juana Garcia and Adelina Vasquez. First, we have Juana, a young girl who lives in a small Mexican village in extreme poverty. When a flood leads to yet another death in her family -- a death that Juana feels responsible for -- Juana's father believes that he must earn more money to house his family in safer quarters. He believes that there are abundant opportunities "en el otro lado," based on a letter from a friend: "Apá's friend wrote about riches unheard of, streets that never end, and buildings that nearly reach the sky. He wrote that there's so much money to be made, and so much food to eat, that people there don't know what hunger is."
With such dreams, Juana's father decides to leave his family and enter the United States by relying on a fast-talking coyote. He makes numerous promises to send money once he's found employment. But Juana and her mother hear nothing for years, leading to further poverty. Worse yet, Juana's father had to borrow money from Don Elias to pay the coyote's exorbitant fee. Once Juana's father embarks on his journey, Don Elias swoops down on Juana's beautiful mother with ideas as to how repayment can be made
A few years later -- after no word from her father, and after her abused mother has fallen into alcoholism -- Juana decides to leave home to find her father.
Juana eventually crosses paths with a young prostitute, Adelina, in Tijuana. They make plans to join forces and sneak into the United States together. For Juana, there's a chance to find her long-lost father. For Adelina, there's hope to cast off the shackles of her abusive boyfriend-pimp. This friendship is perhaps one of the most affecting elements of Grande's narrative. And, after a twist reminiscent of Dickens, these brave young women end up insinuating themselves into each other's life more than one could imagine.
The publisher tells us that Grande was born in Guerrero, Mexico, in 1975, and that she entered the United States as an undocumented immigrant at age 9. Despite such obstacles, Grande earned her bachelors of art degree in creative writing from the University of California at Santa Cruz and was a 2003 PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow. In other words, Grande is living the American dream and has offered a striking and moving story about people who have traveled the same dangerous journey that she did.
"Across a Hundred Mountains" is a beautifully rendered novel that maintains its power throughout because Reyna Grande keeps control over her language and does not feel a need to trumpet emotionally volatile scenes of alcohol and drug abuse, rape, poverty and infant mortality. This is a breathtaking debut.
Daniel A. Olivas is the author of four books, including "Devil Talk: Stories" (Bilingual Press, 2004), and a children's book, "Benjamin and the Word / Benjamin y la palabra" (Arte Publico Press, 2005). His Web site is www.danielolivas.com , and he may be reached at olivasdan@aol.com .
May 1, 2006
SECTION: FICTION
LENGTH: 349 words
HEADLINE: ACROSS A HUNDRED MOUNTAINS
BODY:
An affecting debut on Mexican poverty, illegal immigration and cosmic injustice.
Split between the narratives of a ten-year-old girl and a woman in her 30s, the novel illustrates the travails of immigration -- the often hard fate of those left behind, the danger of crossing the United States border and the splintered sense of home experienced by those who have made it to El Otro Lado, the other side. The cycle of tragedy for young Juana begins with a flood: Unable to keep the water out of their cardboard shack, Lupe goes for help, instructing daughter Juana to stay on the table with baby Anita. When Lupe and her husband Miguel return, they find Juana asleep and Anita dead underwater.
To pay for the cost of their baby's burial, Miguel decides to go North for work before the interest on the loan triples the original debt. Weeks pass and Lupe sinks into despair they haven't heard from Miguel, and the town assumes that he's abandoned her, an all-too-common occurrence. Worse yet, their creditor Don Elias is demanding payment from Lupe, and gives her two options -- she becomes his whore, or he has her jailed. Juana stands by helplessly, praying to the Virgin to bring her father back, watching her mother give birth to a baby boy that Don Elias kidnaps, selling quesadillas at the train station to feed the now raving Lupe. Poor Juana's story gets much worse before it gets better. Adelina's tale is equally bleak. Living in Los Angeles and working as a social worker at a woman's shelter, she is searching for the father she hasn't seen in years. Her singular purpose has kept her away from life and love until she finds a coyote who recognizes the description she gives of her father, a man who died crossing the border. Now with her father's ashes, she is going to bring him home to Mexico . By the (not-so-surprising) end, Juana and Adelina achieve the kind of hard-won justice that occurs only in fiction.
A politically well-timed tale of the journey to El Norte.
March 2006
By Linda L. Miller, Collection Development, Brodart Company
¡Hola! Me llamo Reyna Grande. ¿Comprendes lo que digo?
If you can't read Spanish, you have no idea what these first two sentences say. Thus, you might understand how this month's first-time novelist Reyna Grande felt when she first came to the United States from Mexico as an eight-year-old child unable to speak any English. It might also help you appreciate just how far this young woman has come.
By and far, the language problem was the biggest hurtle she had to face, but like everything before and since, she tackled it with determination and with her father's admonishment that she “take advantage of everything this country had to offer-especially an education,” resonating in her ears. In fact, once they came to this country, Reyna said he became a bit of a tyrant regarding education. “He used to threaten to send us back to Mexico if we didn't study hard. So, for the most part, we were straight ‘A' students.”
Life in Mexico was not easy for Reyna, born in Guerrero in 1975. Her family was very poor. That's why, when she was five, her parents left her and her siblings in the care of their grandmother to go to the United States in search of work and establish a home for themselves and their children there. “It is very common for parents to leave their children behind and go to the United States ,” Reyna said. Life for those left behind is tough, she explained. That is the premise of Reyna's first novel, Across a Hundred Mountains , which tells the story of Juana Garcia, whose father disappeared 19 years earlier after leaving the family to go to the United States.
Like Juana Garcia, Reyna and her siblings lived in deplorable conditions “in a little shack made of bamboo sticks and tar-soaked cardboard, which is exactly like the shack where Juana lives,” she shared. “One of my most memorable experiences is dealing with the floods every rainy season. Our shack was close to the canal, and whenever it rained really hard, the canal overflowed. I remember waking up one night to find our shack filled with water!” She also shared the anguish of watching her grandmother die days after being stung by a scorpion that fell from the ceiling of their shack.
Finally arriving in the United States , Reyna was enrolled in 5 th grade. “I was put in a little corner, along with other non-English speakers, and was taught by the teacher's assistant, not the teacher herself,” Reyna said. “I remember looking at the 20-some kids in the classroom, who were being taught by the teacher, and I felt sad to be excluded, sitting there in a little corner, not being able to communicate with my own teacher. I'm not sure if this situation has improved much. I know that some schools offer ESL classes so that non-English speakers can learn the language at their own pace, instead of being put in an English-only classroom. Other schools, however, don't have that, so non-English speakers are put in a classroom where only English is spoken, and it becomes a sink-or-swim situation for them,” she concluded.
Reyna graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park ( Los Angeles ) in 1993. That was followed by Pasadena City College from 1994-1996. She then transferred to the University of California , Santa Cruz , graduating in 1999 with a B.A. in Creative Writing and Film & Video. She also attended National University and received her teaching credential in 2003. She then taught ESL to 6 th -8 th graders until 2004 when she switched over to teaching adult ESL, which she enjoys.
In 2003, Reyna also participated in the Emerging Voices Rosenthal Fellowship program offered by Pen Center USA . She met her agent, Jenoyne Adams, who sent Reyna's manuscript for Across a Hundred Mountains to an editor. The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
“It is very important to me to share the experiences of those left behind,” Reyna said. “Some Americans think that Mexicans only come here to do harm. What I like to do is to show them that there are many people who come here and do good things. Here I am, from an illegal immigrant, to a published author. There must be a lot of success stories like that of illegal immigrants who have come here and contributed to society,” she said.
Another driving force behind her success is her four-year-old son, Nathaniel. While her son is not old enough to understand the advantages he has that his mother did not, Reyna says, “Being poor as a child makes me want to give my son everything I didn't have. When I feed him, clothe him, buy him presents for his birthday or for Christmas, I feel good, knowing that my child will have all the things I once longed for as a child.”
Reyna is already at work on her second novel which will explore the world of Folklorico: Mexican music and dancing. She invites readers to visit her web site at www.reynagrande.com.
|
| Her story Immigration novel drew from writer's own journey
|
| Creative-writing professors often admonish their students to "write what you know." Apparently Reyna Grande took this advice to heart with her debut novel, "Across a Hundred Mountains" (Atria Books, $23). Grande eloquently and with great power puts a human face on undocumented immigration with Juana, a poor Mexican girl who leaves her small town to find her father in the United States. "I used many of my own experiences to give shape to Juana's life," Grande said. For example, when she was just a few years old, her father and later her mother left for the United States to earn money to give their children a better life. In the novel, Juana's father leaves when she is 12. The crushing poverty Grande's family endured in Mexico also made its way into the novel: "When my parents left, my siblings and I lived in a little shack made of bamboo sticks and tar-soaked cardboard, which is exactly like the shack where Juana lives." The nearby canal flooded their shack during the rainy season; Grande made that a pivotal plot element in Juana's story. Grande's journey to the United States as an undocumented immigrant imbues the novel with realistic and horrifying details that could only come from experience: "I still remember the helicopter flying above us, and the dead man we found hidden under some bushes." Of course, Grande had to research aspects of her narrative when she lacked experiences to draw on, but this is the job of a novelist who wants to get it right. Grande's next project is an as-yet-untitled novel that explores the world of folklórico. "Mexican folk dancing is a subculture in the Latino community, but it isn't written about much," she notes. In the novel, she writes about five women and their relationship to folklórico. An excerpt will be published in "Latinos in Lotus Land: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature," which will be released in 2007 by Bilingual Press. There is no question that Grande is living the American dream. She was born in Guerrero, Mexico, in 1975, and entered the United States at age 9. She earned her bachelor of arts degree in creative writing from the University of California at Santa Cruz. With that, she became the first person in her entire family to obtain a degree. In 2003, Grande became a PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellow, which led to her getting a literary agent who placed Grande's novel with Atria Books. Grande hasn't let critical acclaim go to her head: "I struggle to improve my life little by little because I have a son who looks up to me." A child couldn't ask for a better role model. Daniel A. Olivas is the author of four books including "Devil Talk: Stories" (Bilingual Press, 2004) and a children's book, "Benjamin and the Word / Benjamin y la palabra" (Arte Público Press, 2005). His Web site is www.danielolivas.com and may be reached at olivasdan@aol.com.
Novel tracks a family split by immigrationSan Antonio Express-News
Web Posted: 06/21/2006 12:00 AM CDTYvette Benavides Reyna Grande's first novel, "Across a Hundred Mountains" (Atria Books, $23), takes the difficult subject of immigration and humanizes the players. |
|||||||||||||||||||||
Grande migrated to Los Angeles when she was 9 years old. In "Across a Hundred Mountains," the details of her experiences — escaping the poverty of her homeland, where she lived in "a tiny shack made of bamboo and cardboard," to find a better life in " el otro lado " (the other side) — resonate on every page. In the novel, Juana is an adolescent Mexican girl whose father leaves the family home right after the accidental drowning of his infant daughter. He travels to the United States and promises to return and take the family back with him. Days turn into weeks, then months and then years. His absence devastates his family. Juana decides she must find her father. She sets out to follow his trail, though the only indication he'd given of his destination was some place "over those mountains." Through her characters, Grande brings us the human faces of millions of undocumented immigrants who come to America. Grande had no connection to her absent father once he ventured alone to the United States. She was only 5 years old when he left. "I remember my father because my grandmother had an 8-by-10 photo of him hanging on the wall," she says. "That was my only connection." Years later her father did return. Grande describes the reunion as "traumatic." "I compared myself to him. We were so skinny. We had lice and tapeworm and were really dirty and wearing this old, torn clothing," she says. "When I saw him, he was so much fatter than in his picture. He was so healthy and clean, and I remember feeling so ashamed to let him see me that way." After two attempts, Grande did indeed make it to " el otro lado ." Once in the United States, the struggle was one with the language. Her teachers did not accommodate her in the classroom. Grande learned English through her own voracious appetite for reading. She now teaches ESL classes and marvels at the tremendous motivation of her students to learn in order to gain more opportunities in this country, but also to give back. "As long as people have the choice of making $5 a day or $5 an hour, they are going to keep coming to the United States," she says. Rather than building fences, she adds, the U.S. should deal with illegal immigration by helping countries like Mexico improve their economies. "If there is something there for them, they don't have to leave their children." Reyna Grande will sign "Across a Hundred Mountains" 5 to 7 p.m. today at the Twig Bookshop, 5005 Broadway.
Yvette Benavides is a professor of English at Our Lady of the Lake University.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
Tuesday, June 20, 2006 Ladies and gentlemen, start your summer reading!
Life has changed and so has summer reading. The hectic demands of daily life in the 21st century mean that finding sufficient time to read books has become increasingly difficult. So summer, which promises at least some respite from work and school commitments, has become a far more crucial time for serious reading, perhaps the only such time left in the year. Of course, many people still equate summer reading with a beach chair and the latest seasonal page-turner from Janet Evanovich ("Twelve Sharp"), Nora Roberts ("Angels Fall") or Patricia Cornwell ("At Risk"). But others will use their summer reading to savor an unfamiliar author, an unexplored subject, an intriguing debut. The summer of 2006 seems particularly well-suited to such discovery, since no single new book has emerged as a dominant must-read in early reviews. The Manhattan publishing world may still wind down during July and August, with half-day Fridays the house rule, but publishing has already provided many worthy titles for whiling away summer hours. No longer is this the lowly season of throwaway fluff. Debut Novel "Across a Hundred Mountains" by Reyna Grande (Atria Books, 255 pages, $23). The issue of Mexican immigration into the United States is all over the news these days, but the human stories of those affected are sometimes lost in the onslaught of angry rhetoric. This quiet-spoken, yet eloquent little novel offers a powerful portrait of the lives of three women along the border, including a 14-year-old Mexican intent on finding her missing father in the States, a young American runaway prostitute who befriends her and a Los Angeles social worker returning to Mexico in search of her own father. Author Grande, who emigrated from Mexico to the U.S. at the age of 8 with her parents, has been honored as an Emerging Voices Fellow by PEN, the noted writers organization. |
|||||||||||||||||||||
CATALINA Magazine Announces ‘Top 5 Books by Latina Authors' in 2006
New York, NY--(HISPANIC PR WIRE)--January 8, 2007--For the second consecutive year, CATALINA magazine is recognizing today's best Latina authors and their work by releasing the “Top 5 Books by Latina Authors” list.
Living the Writer's Life: Reyna GrandeMelinda PalacioReyna Grande's debut novel, Across a Hundred Mountains, is not the usual immigrant story and Reyna Grande is not the typical immigrant. At age nine, she crossed the border with her father and she has gone on to become a UCSC graduate, a 2003 PEN Center USA Emerging Voices fellow, and a new author. Most would say, she is living the American Dream. However, after the favorable reviews have been cast and her first book tour comes to a close, she is simply a writer, hard-working, talented, and with eyes set on her next books and a film production of her first novel.Grande has always been a writer. When she was in junior high school, she won a writing competition for one of her short stories. As an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz, she published a chapbook of her short stories, Under the Guamuchil Tree, with a grant from the university. However, it wasn't until she was working at a middle school that she wrote an 80-page children's book and realized that she was ready to produce a novel. She finished the children's book in two weeks and wrote two chapters every day. "For me it was a breakthrough because up until then, all I had written were 12-page short stories. It helped me feel I could finish the novel." Across a Hundred Mountains has received favorable reviews from Publisher's Weekly, People Magazine, and Kirkus Review, to name a few. The success of her first novel sent the young author, 31, into a whirlwind of excitement that began when her manuscript was first accepted for publication by Atria Books. "I was holding my breath," said Grande. "I was too excited to think about anything else." The moment of her dreams arrived and Grande went along for the ride. In hindsight, Grande would have started serious work on her second novel as soon as the manuscript was accepted. "It was a year wasted. I do regret a little bit not writing. The bottom line is there's no excuse for not writing. I should've been writing. I had the time to write. It all comes down to being disciplined. Writing a second novel and letting go of what they are going to say about you can be more difficult." Another distraction that came with the success of her first novel was Grande's first book tour. It was an exhaustive tour, but Grande enjoyed meeting her readers and answering their questions. Grande is a very giving person. Her candid blog is a peek into her personal and professional life. She doesn't mind sharing her life as a writer with her readers. She enjoys the fact that her book signings are more of a forum for her readers to get to know her than an actual reading of her novel. "My readings are 80% about me. I don't talk about the book. I share more about my own experiences and what led me to write. For me it's opening up to the audience. I get personal questions--that's pretty much the tone of my readings, opening up and answering questions." Grande finally has time to focus on her second novel. It's almost done! The novel explores the lives of four women and the world of Folklorico dancing. The Los Angeles resident loves Mexican folk dances and Folklorico's vast variety of the music, steps, and costumes. "I find them very creative," she said, "that's one of the beauties of Mexico. It's kind of like Mole--every state makes it different." Her favorite dance is Toro Rabon from her home state of Guerrero. An excerpt of Grande's second novel will be included in the forthcoming anthology Latinos in Lotus Land by Bilingual Press 2007. Reyna Grande's Across a Hundred Mountains is available in bookstores. To read more about Grande, visit her website and blog www.reynagrande.com .
Across a Hundred Mountains
New West Book ReviewReyna Grande's “Across A Hundred Mountains”By Jenny Shank, 8-16-07
Across A Hundred Mountains Reyna Grande's Across A Hundred Mountains , recently published in paperback, offers a human story behind the thousands of immigrants who cross illegally from Mexico to the United States each year. Although the book is fiction, the author's personal experience informs her tale. According to the biography on her website , Grande, who now lives in California, “entered the U.S. as an illegal immigrant in 1985” to join her parents when she was ten years old. Earlier this year, the book won the annual El Premio Aztlan Literary Award, started by New Mexico writer Rudolfo Anaya to honor Chicano literature. Across A Hundred Mountains begins with a scene of devastating loss in a Mexican village. Nine-year-old Juana, her baby sister, and mother Lupe are stuck in their flooding shack, waiting for Juana's father Miguel to return from his work as a campesino. Lupe goes to search for him, leaving Juana standing on the kitchen table holding her sister. Juana falls asleep while she waits for her parents to return, and the baby dies in the floodwater. The death of the baby sets off a chain of events that destroys the García family. When Miguel can't pay the debt for the baby's funeral, he decides to head to the United States to find work, leaving Lupe vulnerable to the rapacious town mortuary director, Don Elías. The story of Juana is intercut with scenes from the perspective of Adelina, a Mexican American woman who works as a social worker in L.A. and travels to Tijuana to find out the truth about her father's disappearance nineteen years earlier. In the first chapter, an old coyote leads her to her father's remains, lying where he fell after a snake bit him during his attempt to cross into the U.S. After Lupe is reduced to a raving alcoholic due to grief caused by the deaths of three of her children, Juana embarks on a journey in the opposite direction to find her father in the U.S. Grande's prose is spare and simple, and its clarity is often beautiful, such as in this description of Juana's neighborhood in which she remembers walking with her father, whom she calls Apá: “They ran down the street, Apá pulling her behind him like a kite. She knew they were almost home when the cobbled stones were replaced with dirt and pebbles. And the rows of pink, blue, yellow, purple, and green concrete houses became shacks growing out of the earth. Little shacks made out of bamboo sticks and cardboard, some leaning against one another like little old ladies tired after a long walk.” Plot and structure rather than nuanced characterization are the primary strengths of Across A Hundred Mountains . Although Juana, Adelina, and Lupe are given complexity, the supporting characters tend to be wholly good or evil, such as the leering, corpulent Don Elías who ultimately makes Lupe pay her debt by having sex with him, and Don Elías' silent, childless wife who “just sat there, knitting baby clothes she donated to the church.” But villains like these help to propel the plot, providing as many dramatic twists and turns as can be found in a telenovela, making the book go down easily in one sitting. What is more striking than the influence of villains on the lives of the García family is the harsh consequences of their poverty and the indifference most of the people they encounter have toward their plight. It's expensive to be poor, their indebtedness compounding every woe, ultimately forcing Juana to become a prostitute for a while in Tijuana until she can raise enough money to hire a coyote to lead her across the border. She and others in her position are treated as something less than human, the money-minded coyote ready to abandon them in the desert if the immigration authorities turn up or if they move too slowly. The simple description of Juana's desert crossing attempt is riveting, and the perils make it evident that only a person who is so desperate to reach the U.S. that she would be willing to give up her life to do so ever embarks on such a journey. With “Across A Hundred Mountains” Reyna Grande has humanized the lightning-rod topic of illegal immigration by telling the story of one embattled family.
January 28, 2008 UC Santa Cruz alumna receives 2007 American Book Award for first novelUC Santa Cruz alumna Reyna Grande has been honored with a 2007 American Book Award for her debut novel, Across A Hundred Mountains . The American Book Awards--established in 1978 by the Before Columbus Foundation--recognize "outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America's diverse literary community." Award-winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized and emerging authors. The goal of the awards is to acknowledge the excellence and multicultural diversity of American writing. Grande earned her bachelor's degree in creative writing/film & video from UC Santa Cruz in 1999. She wrote the first 80 pages of Across A Hundred Mountains as part of her senior project in UCSC's Literature Department, and the book is now required reading in core courses at the campus's Porter and Kresge Colleges. Inspired by her own journey to the U.S. from a childhood of extreme poverty in Mexico, Grande's novel deals with the issue of immigration and how it affects family members—both those who make it across the border, and those who are left behind. As People magazine noted: "Grande's spare, elegantly written tale of a young Mexican girl searching for her farmworker father, missing since he left to seek his fortune in 'el otro lado', is a timely and riveting read." "I wrote this story because all of the books that I read, especially those by Latino authors, never quite captured my own experience," Grande said in a recent article published in UC Santa Cruz's Review magazine Review . "A lot of books deal with the children of immigrants—what they go through and their identity as U.S.-born Latinos. I always felt a little left out because I wasn't born here, and these stories weren't reflecting my personal experience." UCSC associate professor of literature Micah Perks described the American Book Award as "a parallel award to the National Book Award—it's a more inclusive award that recognizes the best books that expand our idea about what it means to be an American." Perks is co-director of the UCSC Creative Writing Program along with associate literature professor Karen Yamashita, who received an American Book Award herself in 1991 for Through The Arc of the Rainforest . "All of us associated with the Creative Writing program are so gratified to play a role in supporting and training young writers like Reyna--writers with something important to say," Perks added. Grande's novel previously won the 2006 Premio Atzlan Literary Award, established to encourage and reward emerging Chicana and Chicano authors. She is currently working on a second novel—the story of four women in a Los Angeles-based folklorico group.
UCSC alumna and author earns prestigious award isaiah guzman - sentinel correspondent Article Launched: 02/26/2008 As a young Mexican immigrant trying to learn English, and later as a student in UC Santa Cruz's literature department, Reyna Grande read lots of books. Yet even from Latino authors, Grande never could find an account that quite captured her own experience of coming to the U.S. So, in an indirect way, she decided to tell her story. "Across A Hundred Mountains," the first 80 pages at least, began as a senior project, and in December, the UCSC alumna's fictional debut novel inspired by her life won a 2007 American Book Award. "The saying goes you write about what you want to read," says Grande, "and that's what I did." The American Book Awards, established in 1978, are among the most prestigious in the nation. Given by other writers, the awards try to focus on the multicultural diversity of American writing. Winners include well-known and established writers as well as those just starting their careers. "I really admire all those Latino writers," said Grande, rattling off a list of her favorites. "They've all got American Book Awards, so when I got it I felt like, 'Oh, I'm headed in the right direction.'" Originally published in 2006, "Across A Hundred Mountains" that year also won the Premio Atzlan Literary Award, which recognizes emerging Chicana and Chicano authors. The book tells a tale of a young Mexican girl coming to the U.S. in search of her farmworker father, who left his family behind for a better life in 'el otro lado.' Now 32 years old and living in South Central Los Angeles with her husband, Cory Rayala, Grande has a similar story. Her parents left for the U.S. when she was just a few years old. Grande's father returned when she was 10 to cross her and her siblings over the border illegally. With their parents gone, Grande and her siblings lived in a shack made of bamboo and tar-soaked cardboard, just like the one in which one of the novel's protagonists, Juana, spends part of her youth. Grande earned her bachelor's degree in creative writing and film and video from UCSC in 1999. She's now working on a third book, her memoir, as well as a master's in creative writing from Antioch University. She also teaches adult education for Los Angeles Unified School District. Four weeks ago, Grande gave birth to her second child, a girl. "I'm totally thrilled and proud of Reyna," said Micah Perks, the co-director of creative writing in UCSC's literature department. "And I think she's worked incredibly hard, both in her writing and in her life." Sometime in the not-so-distant future, Grande said she may return to Mexico for a year with her husband. He'll teach English, she'll write and get reacquainted with the country she left at such a young age. "Sometimes I get very nostalgic for it," she said, "and I think it's because I hardly know it." Contact Isaiah Guzman at 429-2436 or jcopeland@santacruzsentinel.com .
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
