Letras Latinas, Part 8: A Conversation with Reyna Grande

Listen in on an oral history conversation with poet and American Book Award recipient Reyna Grande, interviewed by Ae Hee Lee '17 MFA, as part of the Letras Latinas Oral History Project. Discover Grande’s artistic journey to traverse The Distance Between Us she wrote about in her memoir of the same name. A poet, memoirist, and novelist, Reyna discusses how fairy tales helped her understand the difficult choices her father faced in her young life, how building community is foundational to the success of Latina writers, and the ways writing about her life has helped her find a home within herself no matter where she is in the world.

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Transcript

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My name is Ahi Lee and I'll be your interviewer today and today is the 6th of November of 2014. We're located in the Julian Zamora Library at the campus of the University of Notre Dame at South Bend, Indiana, and I'll be interviewing Raina Grandif, fiction and memoir writer, author of Across a Thousand Moun Hundred Mountains. Dancing with butterflies and the distance between us. I would like to thank you for being part of our oral history project here in the Institute of Latino Studies. And for the purposes of documentation, could you please tell us your full name, date and place of birth, and where you're living today? Yeah, my name is Reyna Grande. I was born in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico. And I live in Los Angeles, California. Thank you again for coming here. Thank you. And doing this interview with us. to start, I would like to ask you to tell us a little bit more about your childhood, your family, and how you came to the U. S. I am aware that all this is like in your beautiful narrative memoir, but yeah, the distance between us, but please give us a good summary. Mhm. Yeah, Well, I was born Iguala, Guerrero, and Guerrero is a very poor state in Mexico, and so when I was born into poverty. My family was very poor, and I was born in a shack made of sticks and cardboard with a dirt floor and no running water, no electricity. And one of my favorite stories of my birth is that when I was born, my mother asked the midwife to bury my umbilical cord in the third floor so that no matter where life took me, I would never forget where I had come from. And that's a very special story for me because I think in many ways it has kept me grounded, you know, to always remember my past and where I come from. so, when I was growing up in poverty in Mexico, my father, he got You know, tired of the poverty and he really wanted to give us something better. His dream was to build us a brick house of our own. And this is why when I was two years old, he decided to come to the United States to look for work and save some money so that he could build us a house. And, you know, at the time when my father came, Mexico was really unstable. The economy was not doing well. There had been some peso devaluations. The country was going through, you know, the national debt crisis. And there were many people who started immigrating to the U. S. And that immigration wave actually lasted 40 years and it just recently ended. But my father was part of the beginning of that immigration wave in the 1970s. So he came out here, to, you know, with the dream of being able to build a house in Mexico. And after two years of working as a farm worker in the Central Valley in California. He hadn't really saved that much money for him to be able to come home to build us a house, so he decided to send for my mother so that she could help him. So when I was four and a half, my mother came here to work with my dad, and she left me and my older brother and sister behind in Mexico. And to me that the period of my life was, I think one of the hardest times of my life to be left behind, but by both my parents and to, you know, feel abandoned by them in many ways, as a child that I really didn't understand the circumstances and. Why my parents had left and I didn't know why my dad wanted a brick house. and I think as a kid, I didn't really see that the poverty, you know, the poverty we lived in the lack of opportunities, I just wanted my family with me, my parents with me. But at that time when my parents left was really hard for me and my siblings. And, you know, we really struggled to, To live our daily life, but I think for me, my childhood was defined by fear because I was really afraid that my parents wouldn't come back for me. And I was afraid that they would forget me and just completely abandon me in Mexico and never return. So many years went by and eventually when I was almost 10 years old, my father finally returned to Mexico. And even though he did manage to build us that dream house, we never lived in it because, a lot of things changed at the time and the economy went from bad to worse and nobody was going back to Mexico. You know, people were leaving Mexico to come here. And my father realized that even though he had built us this house, he couldn't come back anymore because there were no jobs and he had found a staple job in LA. And, he didn't want to give up that job. So because he couldn't come back to Mexico anymore, he decided to bring us to the U. S. So that's how my siblings and I ended up immigrating here. I was, you know, nine and a half when I had to run across the border illegally. We came here as undocumented immigrants because at the time my, my parents didn't have legal documentation. So the only way to reunite the family was by, sneaking into, across the border with a smuggler. And that's how we ended up here in the U S and we escaped, Mexico, you know, and I think for me, I was really sad to leave my country, but at the same time, I knew that I wouldn't get very far there. And when I came to the U S I realized that I had been given an opportunity, you know, to be in a new place where I could start a new life. Where I could finally have some dreams for the future that, that were possible, you know, that I could, pursue those dreams and actually make them a reality. And that's what I focused on when I got here on making my dreams come true. On that note then, could you tell us more about how you came to writing as a reader and as a writer? The way I came to writing was, that I had a, I had, I had some experiences, I think, as a little girl that kind of, you know, led me to become a writer. And the first experience I had that I think what's actually, you know, a really powerful one was that when I was in Mexico and my parents were here, you know, and I would think about my father's dream of building us a brick house in Mexico. and I didn't understand my dad's dream because for me, even though we were poor and we didn't really have a lot going for ourselves, I felt like a home is a home, even if it's a shack of sticks, it's still our home. So I didn't understand why my father and my mother had to leave so they could build us another home. and I remember, you know, because we didn't really have a television, so my siblings and I loved to listen to the radio and they had like soap operas on the radio and they had, this program called Story Time where they would have, folktales and fairy tales and fables every night after dinner. And I remember one time on the radio, they had the story of the three little pigs. And when I heard that story, you know, about the first two pigs that got killed by the big bad wolf or the pigs that lived in a shack made of straw and sticks, the shack. You know, where I had been born and then the pig that survived the wolf was the one that lived in a brick house. And when I heard that story on the radio, I just remember how much it impacted me to hear about the brick house. and I thought about my father's dream. And I realized that my father wanted. More than just the brick house, that to him, it was really his way of feeling as a father and as a husband that he could protect his family and the brick house meant that to him, you know, it was his way of protecting us, of keeping us safe from the big bad wolf outside the door and that story, you know, it had that power to help me understand, you know, And I realized how, powerful stories can be and how they can teach us lessons and they can help us understand the world around us. So ever since then, I started listening to more stories in a different way. When I realized they were more than just entertainment and that I could learn a lesson from them. So I think I just fell in love with stories because of that. And, I turned to stories as a way to help me cope with my situation. And then when I came to the U. S., you know, with all the changes in my life with, you know, coming to a new country and having to learn, English and, and learn a new way of life, I turned to stories again to help me. cope with the changes in my life. So I continued to be an avid reader here. and, so stories always played a big part of my life. And then I went from being a reader of stories to being a, a writer of stories. And it was an easy transition, you know, to go from one to the other. And, so I had, an experience when I got to the U. S. when I was in elementary school and I still didn't know English. I was going to a school that didn't really have resources for its immigrant students and I was put in a corner table. In my classroom and I felt marginalized and I felt excluded from participating in the class because I didn't speak any English. And halfway through the school year, my school had a writing competition where all the students had to write a story. And I was really excited because I had never written a story before. And so I was excited about writing my very first story and I had to write it in Spanish because I didn't know English yet. And I remember, that at the end of the week, the teacher collected our stories and she read through them to pick the best ones for the competition. And when she got to my story and she saw that it was in Spanish, she put it in the reject pile. And I remember that episode as being something that really impacted me because it, to me, that rejection. Was a rejection of me as a person. You know, I felt that my teacher was rejecting my story and she was rejecting me and she made me feel ashamed to be an immigrant and to not speak, you know, English and to. And she just made me feel so ashamed of everything that I was, and I said that I would never write again because I didn't want to be rejected in that way. So it took me a very long time to actually want to write again. And when I was 13, I was in eighth grade and I had gone, you know, through an ESL program at my junior high and I had learned. English, and I was now in, regular English classes in 8th grade. My, my school had another writing competition and I decided to enter and I said, I am going to write a story in English. And if I get rejected, at least I'm getting rejected on the same terms as everyone else. And that's why I made myself write this story. And I hadn't written in three years and I hadn't written any stories in three years ever since I got rejected in fifth grade. So I made myself write a story in English, and this was my very first story in English, and I entered the competition, and then I ended up winning first place. And that was a big deal for me, because I finally felt accepted, you know, in a way I hadn't felt before, and I felt more confident, and it just, I don't know, it made me want to keep writing. That's very living change. Yeah. And I do wonder, if I hadn't won, right, would I have kept writing? I don't know if I would have, but just winning. Winning, you know, first place and, receiving that, that acceptance and that validation, it gave me that confidence. So I've been writing ever since, you know, 13 years old and I'm 39 now and I never stopped writing since then. Great. And then you also talk about Diana, who was like your teacher and mentor, who was a big influence to you and introduced to you other writers like Isabel Allende, Julia Alvarez, Laura Esquivel, and Sandra Cisneros. would you consider them as models for your own writing? or maybe what other authors do you think influenced you or your writing? Yeah, I think definitely Latina writers have been my biggest role models. Because I think that being a writer is hard enough, but being a Latino writer is even harder, but being a Latina writer is even harder. And I really admire, you know, Latina writers because they were the pioneers, you know, they were the trailblazers. I remember one time I, I heard, Julia Alvarez speak and during her presentation, she mentioned something that, that, that really, interested me and I started doing research about it because what she said was that she was really lucky. And then she mentioned, you know, Sandra Cisneros, and she said that her generation of writers were really lucky because they were, they started writing at a time where, there was more interest in, in, in writings by Latina writers. And so I started doing some research on Latina writers and I, you know, I discovered how during the Chicano movement. they were fighting, you know, for their rights, fighting to be heard, but it was a male dominated movement. And also in terms of, you know, Chicano Latino writers, it was the males who were getting published and whose work, was being read. And then the Chicana Latina writers had a really hard time putting their work out there. So they ended up like, you know, starting their own presses and supporting each other. And then, you know, some years later, all of a sudden, big publishers from the U. S. started getting interested in their work, and that's basically how Julia Alvarez and Sandra Cisneros became part of the mainstream literary, culture. So that was really interesting, you know, to find out about who they were and all the struggles that they faced. and I know. That as a Latina writer and the success that I have found, you know, in, in my own career, I owe it to them, you know, because they were the ones who fought to be heard, who fought to have their writing acknowledged. And because of all the work that they did, I have benefited from that. And so I'm really grateful to them, you know, for everything that they did. And for their continued support of the new generations. And that's something that I have seen with all of these Latina writers that they are supporting, you know, the writers from my generation and the younger writers. So that's why I do consider them my role models because they taught me how to work hard. How to, you know, always keep fighting for my writing and to not let anyone take it away from me. And they taught me to also, look around me and try to support, you know, other aspiring writers as well. Hmm. and also later you obtained like a BA in creative writing in and film and video from the University of California Santa Cruz, and later received your MSA. in creative writing from Antioch University, but well, how was your experience in this workshop, and you also had two, two works of fiction across Hundred Mountains and Dancing Butterflies that were published in 2006 and 2009 respectively. did you work on them while you were in MFA? Well, Across 100 Mountains, I worked on it when I was, at UC Santa Cruz. That was actually my senior project. And when I started writing Across 100 Mountains, that was supposed to be my memoir. And I, I ended up not being able to write a memoir because I was 22 years old and maybe I was a little young to write a memoir because Everything I was trying to write about, I had gone through it, so the pain was still very raw, and I hadn't really given enough time for me to be able to analyze things in a, in a more detached way, you know, and to really understand the things that had happened. So, because I still wanted to graduate and I needed to write a senior project, I turned that memoir into a novel. And when I did that, the whole story completely changed on me. It's still a little bit out of biographical, but it just went off on its own. And I ended up just following my character and seeing where she wanted to go. And I stopped foreseeing my story. And instead, I just let her tell me what her story was. And I guess I sound crazy when I say that, but it's true. She took over my story. but, I had a really good time writing the book and I, you know, I had some interesting experiences when I was an undergrad at UC Santa Cruz, because. When I started there, the Latino population was very small on campus, and I was actually most of the time the only Latina student in the creative writing classes that I took. and I've struggled my first year in Santa Cruz because I felt that I wasn't being understood by my peers and by my teachers. Whenever, you know, it was my turn to be workshopped in class and I would submit my, my, my stories to be critiqued in class, all the time, I just kept hearing the same comments, you know, especially like from my teachers who would tell me, you know, Reina, your stories are so melodramatic. Where do you get those stories? You have such a wild imagination and it's all over the top and not based on reality. And I was writing stories about being hungry, living in poverty in Mexico, walking to school barefoot because we didn't have shoes to wear, and the floodings, you know, and people dying during the floods, and, you know. And I was just writing about my reality, you know, that I had experienced in Mexico and I was writing about the kind of poverty that you don't see in the U. S. and so I was writing about experiences that, that neither my teachers nor my peers had ever experienced. So they thought I was making it all up and that's why, you know, every time it was my turn to be critiqued, I just didn't like it because I knew that they weren't going to understand what I was trying to write and I actually thought about dropping out at some point because it would get very emotionally tiring to try to explain, you know, that this was a reality, that I wasn't being melodramatic. Or maybe I was a little bit. I'm Mexican. I grew up watching sopa for us. So melodrama is part of who I am, but it was a reality that they couldn't understand. But, I just, you know, I kept going with the program and then the next year I actually had some teachers that were more understanding and who I really liked to work with. So I stayed and I was able to, complete my senior project And I did keep writing, you know, about those experiences, but it taught me an important lesson because I realized that, you know, not everybody's going to understand what I write, not everybody's going to relate to the stories that, that, and the experiences I write about. and that's just part of life, you know, and I, you know, I had to rethink like the way I approach writing and I also had to think about more you know, universal themes and how can I write stories where I can still tell my reality. but also be able to connect with my readers. Make them understand. yeah. So those were some things that I learned from that experience. So, Across the Hotter Mountains, it was, you know, something I, I worked on at UC Santa Cruz. And then, With Dancing with Butterflies, I worked that on my, when I was getting my MFA, I worked on that book during my program from the MFA. In one of your interviews, you explained why you decided to part from fiction to write a memoir, and here I quote, Even though my novels are very personal and the material I write about is drawn from my own experiences, they are fictional stories. After I completed my second novel, I wanted to write this real story about my life before and after illegally immigrating to the US from Mexico. I wanted to shed light on the complexities of immigration and how immigration affected my entire family in both positive and negative ways. could you talk more about how the process of writing your memoir began? And also, for me, I've always felt that the memoir genre compared to, in contrast to fiction, requires a sort of, othering of oneself, like distancing, when writing about one's own life because it's personal. So could you share with us how different writing, the writing of The Distance Between Us, your memoir was from writing, your adult novels, your fiction novels? Well, I think, With novels, it's a different approach because with a novel you're actually creating the world from scratch, you know you create the world you create the characters so you're building from the bottom up, you know So you go from like here to here and with memoir because you're writing about your own life and it depends You know how long the story spans and it could spend five years. It could spend ten years, whatever You have a lot of material, so you look at all this material and then your job as a memoirist is to go from here to here, where you can have a solid, you know, structure with, you know, narrative arc and so you have to really shape it. And, so, so that to me was the challenge, you know, like sifting through my memories and figuring out what the story was. And then also thinking of my life in terms of plot points, which, you know, we never think of our lives or, oh, that's the exciting incident, oh, that must be the midpoint, you know, and, oh, this is the second plot point and this is the climax of my life. so I had a hard time thinking of my life in those terms. And, and then also, you know, because I was writing memoir, I said, well, this is true, I can't make anything up, I would have a hard time even writing dialogue, for example, because I couldn't remember 100 percent that this is what people said, so then I wouldn't let any of my characters talk, and there was very little dialogue, There were not a lot of details also because there were things that I couldn't remember. So my, my, my first few drafts were pretty terrible. And then I had a talk with, with my former MFA teacher and he explained to me, you know, that what a memoir was. And he also told me, you know, that yes, you are allowed to recreate things, you know, to the best of your memory. And, yes, you can let your characters talk. so he was really helpful in helping me work through my, my, my fears and the holdups that I had in writing the memoir. And after that, I was able to say, okay, well, it seems to me from reading, I read several memoirs. That, that, the only, the difference really between writing a novel and writing a memoir was that one was a true story and, but it came down to the same elements, you know, it came down to having a narrative arc, to having dialogue, to having scenes, to having well developed characters, to having details, and so, so I noticed that there were, you know, similarities between, you know, the way you approach a novel and the way you approach a memoir. So I used the tools that, that I had as a novelist. And that's when I was able to really get into scenes, you know, and really write scenes in the memoir. And so that was an interesting experience of getting there. And I ended up, you know, choosing the structure for the book because, I divided it into two parts into the, my, my life in Mexico, my life in the U S and the midpoint was the border crossing. Because I always think of my life as a before and after, you know, before I came here and after I came here and I, so I thought the border crossing is the midpoint of my, at least of my coming of age. And so once I knew what the midpoint of the story was, I started to think about, you know, well, what's the inciting incident? And I realized that, you know, the moment that my life changed was when my mother came to the U. S. Because for me, my status quo that I was that, you know, I was living with my mother and my siblings and my father was gone and he was in the U. S. And because he left when I was two, I didn't have any memories of him. So he was just this absent father. And that was my status quo. That was my normal life. But the moment my life changed was when my mother left. And, so that's when I started the book there. That's when she left. So, so I just started to think of my life in, in, you know, in those terms. so that, that kind of helped to give me more guidance of what the structure was and where to start and where to end. Right, right. so that was an interesting process with the memoir. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. Can I ask you to read a part of, a couple of pages from The Distance Between Us, your memoir? Sure. I have here page 53 to 54, and I, from here to the end. Just, yeah, just from here to Where it says no? Yes. Oh, okay. No, I said. Mago looked at me, and I knew that sooner or later she would make me do it. Mago, you shouldn't eat things from the ground. They're bad. They've been kissed by the devil, I said. Mago waved my words away. Those are just tales Abuela Vila likes to scare us with, she said. Abuela Vila used to say that when food falls to the ground, The devil, who lives right below us, kisses it and taints it with evil. Look, I don't know if the devil exists or not, and I don't care. I'm hungry, so go get it. Mago pushed me toward the mango, but I shook my head. Tails or no tails, I wasn't going to risk it. But my mouth watered at the thought of sinking my teeth into the mango's crunchy flesh. The bell rang and the kids rushed back to their classrooms. Mago and Carlos waved and disappeared from sight. I stood there under the jacaranda tree. And my feet didn't want to move. I didn't want to go back to the classroom. I didn't want to go back and struggle to hold my pencil with my useless right hand. I didn't want to see El Maestro looking at me and making me feel ashamed, making me feel as if I were evil. I didn't want him to hit me again and have my classmates cheer and laugh, but if I didn't go back, I knew I wouldn't learn to read and write. How could I ever write a letter to my parents and ask them to please, please come back? As I made my way to the classroom, I noticed the mango again. It laid on its side, its flesh yellow like the feathers of a canary. It was covered with red chili powder and dirt. And what if Mago is right? I asked myself. What if the devil doesn't exist? If he doesn't exist, that means the left side isn't the side of the devil. And that would mean I am not evil for being left handed. I looked around and the courtyard was now empty. I bent down and picked up the mango, flicked the dirt off and sank my teeth into it. The chili powder burned my tongue. The burning sensation made me feel warm all over. I stood there waiting for something to happen. I waited to see if the devil was going to burst out of the earth on his horse. and dragged me to hell with him. But the Jacaranda waved in the breeze, looking beautiful with its bright purple flowers. From above the brick fence, I could see the colorful papel picado hanging in rows over the cobblestone street. The church bell started ringing, and I turned to look at the two towers at the top of the hill, the metal cross glistening under the bright noon sun. I returned to class, and El Maestro looked disapprovingly at me. I sat at my desk and looked at my pencil. From the corner of my eye, I saw El Maestro making his way toward me, his ruler going up and down. Up and down. I reached for my pencil and clutched it tightly in my left hand. Thank you. So, one of my favorite things about your memoir is that she's backed and forth, past and present, and how the young, like, how the young Raina in the book, is able to view or digest her experiences through the lens of superstition, and fairy tales, and then she breaks away to find other literature. And so, I was wondering, the book as a whole gave me an impression of, retrospection and meditation. So, would you view the act of reading and writing as something that allowed you to digest or come in terms with your feelings? like a healing process or a sort of reconciliation with your past and your family? Yeah, well, I think reading and writing has played a big part in my life, you know, and in who I am and As I mentioned earlier, just reading stories helped me to really cope with the changes in my life and the things that were going on around me. And every time I picked up a book, it was really my way of learning more about my, myself as well, and my experiences and seeing how other people live their lives and what they learn from them. So that was what writing, reading books did for me. And, you know, even books that were not about my culture or that didn't really speak to my immigrant experience, like I would find, try to find similarities. And I remember when I was a teenager, I used to love the stories of VC Andrews because she wrote about some really harsh realities that, that I could identify with. And it was, You know, like when I read Flowers in the Attic, and it's a story of, of three children, four children, whose mother takes them back to her childhood home, and the kids get locked up in the attic, and the evil grandmother watches over them, and I recognize that evil grandmother is oh, they have an evil grandmother, just like I did, and the way they were mistreated by the grandmother and by the mother who was very indifferent, like I could relate to that too, and reading those books, even though they were about, you know, white American kids, it actually helped me to understand, you know, American culture in a way and make it less alien to me. And that's why I love reading V. C. Andrews, because she did write about things I could relate to, but yeah, reading for sure, was something that, that really impacted me and that helped me, you know, to, to deal with my own problems, and writing has always also done the same, because for me, like when I started to write, it was my way of, trying to understand, the things that were happening to me. And I wrote a lot about Mexico and, you know, I've always written about Mexico. Most of my work has been about Mexico because it's a big part of who I am. And when I left Mexico at nine and a half, I realized that I was losing something there. You know, I was losing my connection to my native country. And having spent, you know, 30 years in the U. S. has made me more American than Mexican in many ways. And also when I go to Mexico to visit my family there, you know, I get treated like an American foreigner. and, you know, even though I say, well, my umbilical cord is buried here in Iguala, so I'm Mexican. And I don't get treated as a hundred percent Mexican. And, so that has been a challenge for me to understand that the minute I left Mexico to immigrate to the US, I was losing. a part of myself there, you know, losing that connection to my country. So I have tried to keep that connection alive by writing about it and by, you know, remembering my life in Mexico and the things that I learned there, the things I went through there. So that's why for me, like I, sometimes I feel that I'm looking at Mexico from the outside. But I also know what it's like to live there, you know, and to live in that, that, that poverty that my family still lives in that poverty there in Iguala. So I like to write about it, you know, I like to explore my past and where I come from and it helps me to always remember my beginnings. It keeps me grounded and I think I'm always going to write about Mexico. Yeah. I actually have a part that I, a couple of pages that I want you to read about that too. it's actually in both of them. I find Soledad also experiences those feelings. So maybe let's look at those two. Here we go. Maybe it's from here to here. The next page. Okay. When I returned to Abuelita Chinta's house after visiting my friends, Mago was angry at me. Where have you been, she asked. I'm the one who brought you here, remember? You can't just do what you want. I wanted to leave for Acapulco today and I'm so sick of this place. Now look at what time it is. I wanted to spend time with my friends before we left, I said. She pointed to the shacks on the other side of the canal, where Meche lived, and said, I don't know why you want to be over there with that trash. What do you mean trash? Have you forgotten that this is where you've come from? I was so furious, and before I could stop myself, I pushed her. Just because I used to live here, it doesn't mean that I still need to be friends with these people, she said, pushing me back. Let them dare call me a little orphan now. You conceited brat, I said, pushing her even harder. Next thing I knew, Mago and I were pulling at each other's hair and tumbling to the ground. Reina! Reina! Leave your sister alone! Mami yelled. But I couldn't stop. I didn't know why I was so angry at my sister. How could she just sever the ties that binds us to this place, to these childhood friends of ours who weren't able to escape this poverty like we did? I was so angry at her for quitting college and ruining her chances for a successful life. Now I realize that we owe it to them, our cousins, our friends, to do something with our lives. If not for us, then for them. Because they would never be able to. I understood so clearly now why Papi said there were so many people who would die to have the opportunities we had, who would kill to get their hands on a green card. Magos and Carlos's refusal to see that angered me more than anything. stop, Mami said, and finally I did. Mago looked at me as if she didn't know me. I ran into my grandmother's house crying and feeling ashamed. For the first time in my life, I had raised a hand to my sister. How could I stop myself from feeling sad that Mago no longer cared about Mexico? That she didn't think of this place as special because it was once our home. Her home was now the United States. Unlike me, she had no accent when she spoke English. Now I knew why that was. Even in her speech, she was trying to erase Mexico completely. I didn't know if I ever could. Or would want to. And this is the part when you, go back to Mexico after. Yeah, we were here for almost eight years. And then we went back when I was in high school and, it was such a shocking experience for me because, you know, I had always, remember Mexico and when I went there, I finally saw that poverty. Because having spent eight years in the U. S., I saw my hometown with different eyes. And it was then when I finally saw the poverty that I had lived in, and I couldn't believe that's where I had grown up. And it was also the time when I realized that I was more American than Mexican and that people there in my community. In my hometown, they didn't treat me the same anymore, and it was when I realized that I spoke English better than I spoke Spanish, and I was trying to communicate with my cousins and my grandma and my aunts and uncles, and I kept stumbling on my Spanish, so it was an eye opening experience for me when I was there that time, and, but it also, you know, it also helped me realize to see me. Why my father had been such a tyrant, you know, and why he had wanted us to educate ourselves and to really get ahead because he knew what he had saved us from. And so that it helped me to realize that too. And, so it was a moment for me when I think for me was when I really made the commitment, you know, to really work hard at my education. Because of that trip. So in that sense, how would you say all this informs your concept of what home is for you? Like where is home now for you, or how would you describe? Well, I think for me, you know, I had to create my own space because obviously Mexico. Didn't really feel like home anymore, but then, you know, in the U. S., it also didn't quite feel like home because, you know, as an immigrant, I've always had to prove my American ness and also had to, Deal with not being completely accepted or included. And so I think for me, home is just the space that I have created myself. And my writing has been that space, you know, where I could write about. About Mexico with some authority, you know, because I was born there and I lived there long enough to be able to write about it, you know, and in a way where I know what I'm writing about. And then, you know, when I write about the U S I also feel that I write it, write about it with that, you know, some authority because I have lived here for 30 years and. And, so I know the two countries and in my writing, I never have to choose between Mexico or the U. S. and I know who I am and I know where I live and I know where I belong when I write. So that's my home, you know, that's the space that I have created for me. here's a more technical question about the Dancing with Butterflies novel. I'm curious about the writing process, like how the four voices, like Yesenia, Soledad, the sisters Elena and Adriana, are braided throughout the novel and how did you design or develop each one of the characters? And how did you decide like how to organize them because the four of them like talk in first person and then they're braided through the novel. Yeah, that book it took me four years to write the book and when I first thought about the book it was actually just gonna be a story Of Adriana and Elena. So it was the story of the two sisters. And They were a little bit inspired, it was a little bit inspired by my relationship with Mago and the way that it became later on, you know, in that, the separation, you know, when she moved out. And I found myself without my sister for the first time. That was one of the darkest moments in my life, you know, to find myself without my sister and to realize that from that moment on, I had to face the world by myself, and that was so scary, you know, such a scary place to be. And so I wanted to write a story of two sisters who also went through that separation and the hurt that came from that. And, you know, like the way Adriana felt so hurt by the, you know, her sister leaving her in a really terrible situation. And so I wanted to explore, you know, the, a relationship between sisters and I wanted to write about Folklórico because I had just discovered Folklórico in college and I thought it was such a beautiful part of the Mexican culture, but it's seldom written about. And I like writing about things that are seldom written about. And so I decided that's what the story was going to be, a story of two sisters set in a world of Folklórico. And I say, you know, as I started to write the book, eventually I started to hear the voice of Yesenia, the director of the group. And it was because I was interviewing directors, you know, to do my research and I just fell in love with the way they saw the world and the way they talked about, you know, their groups. and so I said, I should have, you know, a director as the character. And I wanted to explore that issue of self image and what happens when you get. older and you cannot do what you love and, you know, so that loss of your, that passion that you have. and, I wanted to explore that. What happens when you lose it? And then I was interviewing also, other folklorico dancers, and I ended up interviewing the guy who makes the kata tunes, and then I fell in love with him. And, you know, this is a man who is so talented, incredibly talented. And he's undocumented, so he was telling me about, you know, his challenges of wanting to have his own business and not being able to and all the limitations that he's encountered because he, of his, undocumented status. So then I created Soledad, based on, on, on this man that I met. And that's how all these characters came to be. And then Stephanie, Soledad's sister, then also wanted to tell her story. And at that point, I was already juggling four different points of view. So then I said, no, I cannot tell your story too. And so I try to incorporate her story into Soledad's story as well. But that's how I ended up, with four different characters. And that was actually a really fun story to write. It was very challenging and because it's told from a first point of view, I really wanted to make sure that each voice was very different for each character. and then I had to map out their stories and how they were going to intersect and how I was going to keep the pacing moving forward. ThinkND. Every time I made that switch to the next character. So I worked very hard on, on that book. Actually, it was a very challenging book, but it was also very rewarding to, to write the book. Generally, your books center around the themes of poverty, family, immigration, the tragic consequences, the good consequences, romance, assimilation, opportunity, and education. How do you see your readers, Latinos and non Latinos, connecting to the issues through your works, like through your voice? What would you say that you wish to convey to them the most? I think for me, you know, there's different kinds of responses that I have been getting from different readers. the first response is, especially with the memoir, you know, I've been meeting a lot of, Immigrant students who read my book and they tell me, you told my story, that's my story, that's what happened to me. And then they said that after they read my book, they felt less alone because they always thought that all the things that were happening to them only happened to them. And yet when they read my work and they realized that it's happened, you know, to other people. And they said, your story made me feel less alone. And it also, you know, they feel inspired that someone who came here as an undocumented child immigrant could go on to do. All the things that I've been able to do and that also inspires them to keep going, you know, to keep pursuing their dreams and that, that is the most fulfilling thing I could ever hear, you know, just to see how I've touched these young students and to encourage them to also, you know, pursue their dreams. And then I've also heard from a different set of readers and these are readers who are child of immigrants or, you know, or their grandparents were immigrants. And when they read my work, they said, you know, I finally understand what my parents went through or what my grandparents went through. And so in a way, I feel that I have helped them. reach across the generations in their family and to be able to understand, you know, what those generations went through when they got here. And that also makes me feel really happy to hear that because I think it is important, you know, for the new generation of kids who are born here, it's important for them to retain, you know, that connection to their past, to their culture and to never forget, you know, where their family comes from. and then the other kind of readers that I've heard are, you know, readers who are not that familiar with the immigrant experience, who don't have, maybe immediate, you know, family members who are immigrants. So they have lost that connection to their immigrant past, and that has been really, good to, to hear from them when they said that by reading my book, they have been able to understand. The issue of immigration in a different way because, you know, most of the time when people hear about immigration, they hear about it from the media or from politicians and they seem to dehumanize the issue. And they talk about him, about immigrants has just numbers, but, you know, in my memoir, I really made the point of writing about immigrants as people. And to give them their humanity, you know, and to say, these are human beings that we're talking about. These are families that are being affected by immigration. And so that has, you know, help people who don't understand the issue to hear about it in a different way and to really understand, you know, what happens with our immigrant families and all the struggles that they face and the sacrifices they make. The price that they pay by coming to the U. S. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was great being here.