A Dream Called Home

Reyna revisits the theme of tenacity in Chapters 10-14. She returns from winter break inspired to write stories about the people she encountered in Mexico. Her goal is to honor the people in her hometown by making them feel seen and amplifying their voices: “I had to remember each of them, write their stories, share their pain, so that they knew they weren’t alone” (74). Reyna’s fiction professor criticizes her efforts, telling her she has “a wild imagination,” that her stories are “over-the-top and overwritten,” and that her writing is “too flowery and full of clichés” (75). Reyna’s doubt grows each time she receives critical feedback. In turn, the praise her fiction professor showers on white students further chips away at Reyna’s confidence. Her bad experiences in advanced fiction bring up memories of the fifth-grade teacher who rejected her story because it was written in Spanish. Rather than give up on becoming a writer, however, Reyna chooses to fight for her dream:

I could choose to leave. I could choose to drop out of the creative writing program, to be silenced. I could choose to believe that my stories didn’t matter. Or I could fight. Hadn’t my own grandmother survived the Mexican Revolution? If I allowed rejection to defeat me, my dreams would fester. I would be eaten by maggots. How could I allow that to happen? (75-76).

Female mentorship also plays an important role in Reyna’s success. During her first winter quarter at UCSC, Marta steps in when Reyna struggles in her advanced fiction course. She offers to read Reyna’s work and gives her encouraging feedback, comparing her writing to famous Chicano authors. Marta gives Reyna Spanish copies of Rulfo’s The Burning Plain and Other Stories and Pedro Páramo, noting the parallels between these books and Reyna’s stories. Like Rulfo, Reyna writes about the destructive power of nature and poor, forsaken towns populated by lonely, destitute people. In Advanced Fiction, for example, she submits a story about the devastating impact of a flood on Iguala, describing how the residents spent a week on their roofs and used makeshift canoes to retrieve their pets’ floating bodies.

Marta also gives Reyna a copy of Rivera’s And the Earth Did Not Devour Him. The book’s central theme—the poverty of migrant workers in the US—resonates with Reyna, who writes a story about a young girl forced to go to school barefoot because her family is too poor to buy her shoes. Marta’s support sustains Reyna through her first year at UCSC. Moreover, exposing Reyna to successful Chicano writers encourages her to stay the course: “With even more conviction, I continued writing, because one day I hoped to write like those incredible authors that Marta so admired, and who were now influencing my own writing with their simple and elegant prose” (78).

Marta plays a central role in Reyna’s education for the remainder of her time at UCSC. In Reyna’s second year, for example, Marta introduces her to a Latina writer’s group on campus and encourages her to submit her work for publication in their journal, Las Girlfriends. Reyna’s confidence grows as a result of her involvement with this group: “I had the opportunity to publish my work and present it in public readings. Best of all, it was wonderfully empowering to be onstage with other Latina artists” (85). Marta also supervises Reyna’s short story collection, Under the Guamúchil Tree. She suggests self-publication, pointing Reyna toward grants to fund the project. Marta then encourages Reyna to turn her stories into stage productions, which Reyna does with the help of another grant.

In addition to nurturing her talent as a writer, Marta builds Reyna’s confidence by helping her improve her Spanish. Reyna’s tenuous grasp of Spanish underscores her dual identity. She describes not feeling wholly Mexican or wholly American at the beginning of her memoir. Interacting with fluent Spanish speakers over winter break exacerbates her sense of alienation: “I also discovered that I spoke a third language […] a mixture of two cultures, two languages, born from the collision of two identities–Spanglish” (94). In Chapter 12, however, Reyna comes to see her dual identity as a positive, rather than a negative trait. This realization comes after a conversation with Marta, who insists people in Mexico treat her differently because she is, in fact, different: “You are now bilingual, bicultural, and binational. You are not less. You are more” (96). This marks a turning point for Reyna. She no longer feels cut in half, but rather, transformed into “twice the girl she used to be” (96).

Despite moving past many of her old insecurities, Reyna’s desire for her father’s love continues to have a profound impact on her life. At PCC, she became infatuated with a maintenance worker who reminded her of her father. Reyna’s need for her father’s love continues at UCSC, where she starts a relationship with Gabe, in large part because he reminds her of her father: “The first time I saw him, he was operating a drill. The shrill sound reminded me of my father, and I stopped outside the door just to listen to it” (103). Gabe’s outfit also brings Reyna’s father to mind: “He had yellow knee guards and steel-toed boots, like the kind my father wore to work […] he was too old for me, and yet I was immediately attracted to him” (103). Although Reyna desperately needs a summer job, the fact that she chooses to do maintenance work speaks directly to her need to understand her father. Only after painting and cleaning apartments does Reyna fully grasp why her father stressed getting a good education. “You don’t know what it’s like to work hard” (102), he would say. After a summer of maintenance work, Reyna finally realizes he was right.