The Distance Between Us: Young Reader’s Edition (2016) is a memoir by Reyna Grande. This edition is a modified version of Grande’s original adult memoir for young readers. The memoir details Grande’s childhood and youth, from her life in Mexico to her experiences as a young immigrant in California. Over the years, she faces many challenges at home and gradually learns how to develop her own dreams when she falls in love with learning and literature. Grande’s coming-of-age story explores themes such as The Challenges of Family Separation and Reunification, Cultural Identity and Assimilation, and The Power of Education and Storytelling.

This guide uses the 2017 Aladdin, Simon and Schuster Children’s Publishing paperback edition.

Content Warning: The source text details complex issues including financial hardship, parental abandonment, child abuse, and alcohol dependency.

Summary

The memoir opens in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico when Reyna Grande is four years old. Two years prior, her father Natalio Grande, or Papi, left Reyna’s family to live and work in the United States. One day, Reyna’s mother Juana Rodríguez tells Reyna, her sister Mago, and her brother Carlos that she is moving to the United States, too. The children are devastated when she drops them off at Papi’s mother Abuela Evila’s house.

For over a year, Reyna and her siblings stay with Evila and long for their parents’ return. Although other neighborhood children are in similar situations, Reyna and her siblings are often teased and bullied for being “orphans.” They have tapeworms and lice, and their grandmother spends the money their parents send on herself instead of on the children. Whenever Reyna is sad or lonely, she touches her belly button to remember her mother. Mago told her that her umbilical cord connects her to Mami even when she’s far away. When she misses Papi, she talks to a framed photograph of him and asks when he will return.

Then one day, Mami shows back up at Abuela Evila’s with her new baby, Betty. She takes the children to live with her mother, their Abuelita Chinta. Reyna and her siblings soon discover that Papi left Mami for another woman named Mila and that Mami is heartbroken. Throughout the following months, they hope that Papi will return. Not long after, however, Mami leaves the children again when she starts dating a man named Francisco. She eventually returns after Francisco dies in a car crash.

Papi returns to Mexico unannounced shortly thereafter and offers to take Mago back to California with him. Mago refuses to leave unless Papi agrees to take Carlos and Reyna, too. They try to convince Mami to let Betty go with them, but she refuses to give her up. The children say goodbye to Mami, Betty, and Chinta and cross the border into the United States in secret.

Reyna tries to appreciate her new life in Los Angeles, California, but she finds the adjustment difficult. Papi often drinks and gets angry. Mila doesn’t seem to like her or her siblings either. Meanwhile, she’s scared that she’s going to fail in school because she doesn’t speak English yet and because Papi is constantly threatening to send her and her siblings back to Mexico if they don’t earn good grades.

Over the years, Reyna develops a love for learning and becomes particularly passionate about reading and writing. In the 8th grade, she wins a short-story competition that encourages her passion. She eventually graduates from high school and starts attending a community college, Pasadena City College. While there, she meets and develops a friendship with her English teacher, Diana Savas. Diana encourages her to transfer to UC Santa Cruz, where Reyna is later accepted and earns her degree in creative writing.

Reyna maintains her relationships with her siblings throughout her early adulthood and does her best to heal her relationship with her mother in the meantime. In 2011, she says goodbye to her father when he dies of liver cancer. Standing by his deathbed, she realizes how much he has contributed to the person she is today.