Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

From bestselling author Reyna Grande--whose remarkable memoir The Distance Between Us has become required reading in schools across the country--comes an inspiring account of one woman's quest to find her place in America as a first-generation Latina university student and aspiring writer determined to build a new life for her family one fearless word at a time. When Reyna Grande was nine years old, she walked across the US-Mexico border in search of a home, desperate to be reunited with the parents who had left her behind years before for a better life in the City of Angels. What she found instead was an indifferent mother, an abusive, alcoholic father, and a school system that belittled her heritage. With so few resources at her disposal, Reyna finds refuge in words, and it is her love of reading and writing that propels her to rise above until she achieves the impossible and is accepted to the University of California, Santa Cruz. Although her acceptance is a triumph, the actual experience of American college life is intimidating and unfamiliar for someone like Reyna, who is now once again estranged from her family and support system. Again, she finds solace in words, holding fast to her vision of becoming a writer, only to discover she knows nothing about what it takes to make a career out of a dream. Through it all, Reyna is determined to make the impossible possible, going from undocumented immigrant of little means to "a fierce, smart, shimmering light of a writer" (Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild ); a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist "speak[ing] for millions of immigrants whose voices have gone unheard" (Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street ); and a proud mother of two beautiful children who will never have to know the pain of poverty and neglect. Told in Reyna's exquisite, heartfelt prose, A Dream Called Home demonstrates how, by daring to pursue her dreams, Reyna was able to build the one thing she had always longed for: a home that would endure.

Mexican Americans --- Mexican American women authors --- Teachers --- Mexican Americans --- Social conditions --- Grande, Reyna. --- University of California, Santa Cruz --- University of California, Santa Cruz --- Students --- Students --- Iguala de la Independencia (Mexico) --- Mexico --- United States --- Emigration and immigration --- Social aspects. --- Emigration and immigration --- Social aspects.

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

"Nepantla Familias brings together Mexican American narratives that explore and negotiate the many permutations of living in between different worlds: how the authors or their characters create or fail to create, a cohesive identity amid the contradictions in their lives. Nepantla or living in the inbetween space of the borderland is the focus of this anthology. The essays, poems, and short stories explore the in-between moments in Mexican American life: the family dynamics of living between traditional and contemporary worlds, between Spanish and English, between cultures with traditional and shifting identities. In times of change, family values are either adapted or discarded in the quest for self-discovery, part of the process of selecting and composing elements of a changing identity. Nepantla is the quintessential American experience that revives important foundational values through immigrants and the children of immigrants. Here readers will find a glimpse of contemporary Mexican American experience; here, also, readers will experience complexities of the geographic, linguistic, and cultural borders common to us all"--

Mexican Americans --- Mexican American families. --- Mexican American families --- Mexican Americans in literature. --- Group identity in literature. --- Ethnic identity. --- Cultural assimilation. --- In literature. --- Mexican-American Border Region