A Dream Called Home

The American dream is a running theme in Reyna’s memoir. The belief that education can lead to professional success, financial stability, upward social mobility, and a sense of belonging drives Reyna’s behavior, both before, during, and after university: “The key to the American Dream will soon be mine” (3), she says to herself on the long journey north from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz. Reyna’s childhood memories of poverty and hunger motivate her to work hard at UCSC, even as those around her socialize. She is acutely aware of the price her family paid for a chance at a better life. Immigrating led to her family’s separation, her parents’ divorce, and her father’s alcoholism, which made him verbally and physically abusive. Rather than let the past defeat her, Reyna uses writing to overcome her trauma, and with sheer determination, she sets out to succeed academically: “My family fell apart when we immigrated. We sacrificed so much for a shot at the American Dream, and I would be damned if I didn’t make the dream mine. A broken family was the price for me to be here” (10).

Resilience and determination define Reyna’s personality. She remains resilient even in lonely, anxious, and sad times. In Chapter 2, for example, she describes her loneliness as she watches parents help their children settle into their dorms from her window. This incident comes after a visit to the campus bookstore, where she witnesses excited parents buying UCSC gear for themselves and their children. Seeing parents support their children highlights Reyna’s solitude and reminds her of being abandoned by her parents. Instead of giving in to her sadness, however, Reyna focuses on the positive: “I closed the curtain and began unpacking. I looked at the room, the small, empty closet. You’re alone, yes, but you’re here. That’s what matters” (13).

Reyna’s resilience and determination are equally evident in the fourth and fifth chapters. In Chapter 4, for example, she describes defying her father’s low expectations of her by enrolling at PCC, where she graduated with excellent grades and learned to take personal responsibility for her education: “I had learned how to adapt, how to use my creativity. There was nothing to be afraid of” (28). Reyna succeeded at PCC despite her father’s certainty that she would fail. He tells her, “You can forget about going to that university. You’re going to be a failure, too, just like [Carlos and Mago], so don’t even bother going” (25).

Chapter 5 also stresses Reyna’s ability to overcome obstacles. The chapter describes how Reyna surmounted her fear of rejection and entered a writing contest in junior high school, ultimately winning first prize. Reyna’s fear stemmed from an incident in the fifth grade, when a teacher rejected her story simply because it was written in Spanish. Reyna tells Alfredo how deeply the incident wounded her: “To me, my teacher hadn’t just rejected my story, she had also rejected me, and I felt ashamed to be an immigrant, a Spanish speaker, and a person of color” (34). Despite her father’s hurtful words and her teacher’s rejection, Reyna never loses hope for a better future. Thus, La Esperanza Market is more than a Mexican grocery store that allows her to “taste the flavors and smell the aromas of the homes [she] once had” (25); it is also a sign of hope, expectation, and possibility.

Although resilience and determination are generally positive traits, Reyna sometimes takes her belief in the power of hard work too far. For example, a conversation with Jaime in Chapter 4 reveals her difficulties commiserating with those who struggle. Jaime tells Reyna he is homesick and that he wants to return to LA at the end of the quarter to see his family and girlfriend. Reyna’s internal dialogue is decidedly unsympathetic: “Don’t you understand that this is an opportunity of a lifetime? [...] [A]nd you would throw it all away simply because you miss your family and some girl and now you want to go home?” (31). Reyna reacts this way out of envy. She is jealous that Jaime has people waiting for him at home, while she is essentially on her own.

Reyna struggles with her identity through much of her memoir. In Chapter 5, for instance, she describes feeling like an outsider no matter where she goes: “To the people who had seen me grow up, I was no longer Mexican enough. But in the U.S. I wasn’t American enough either.” Seemingly innocent questions about where she is from are fraught for Reyna, as evidenced by her first encounter with Carolyn in Chapter 2:

Yes, I’m a foreigner, and everything from my brown skin to my accent to my Mexican birth certificate prevents me from laying claim to the U.S. even though I have a green card that gives me permission to be here. I couldn’t simply say I was from Los Angeles, which might imply I was American born. I wasn’t. I was an outsider (12).

Reyna’s difficulties fitting in exacerbate her loneliness and underscore her otherness. This is particularly evident at UCSC, where the faculty, staff, and student body are predominantly white. The racial make-up of UCSC, which contrasts starkly with that of Los Angeles, leads to uncomfortable situations, such as Reyna having to correct a literature professor who mispronounces her name. It is not the first time someone garbles her name or the names of her siblings. When they first arrived in the US, teachers routinely changed her sister’s name Magloria to Maggie, while Reyna was sometimes called Renée. White people also tend to mangle Reyna’s surname: “Sometimes my last name–Grande–was pronounced like the river in Texas, a river I hadn’t crossed, though I had on numerous occasions been called a wetback” (29). Although Reyna is tempted by the idea of reinventing herself as Renée Grand—the name her literature professor calls during roll call—her fear of losing her identity convinces her not to raise her hand: “If I did, what would happen to the Big Queen, the grandiose name my mother had given me and which I knew one day I would have to live up to?” (29).

Reyna’s feelings of alienation begin to fade after she attends a campus action protesting Prop 209, a constitutional amendment repealing affirmative action in California. She is energized by the hundreds of students forming a human chain around the student services building, many of whom are minorities. She joins the protest, shouting slogans and singing songs. Her feeling of belonging grows after Reyna meets Latino students at the protest. Her new friends encourage her to enroll in a Chicano literature course the following quarter. They also introduce her two campus taquerías where she can eat familiar food. Attending the protest, then, marks a turning point in Reyna’s life.