111 pages • 3 hours read
Reyna GrandeThe Distance Between Us
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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Reyna Grande
As narrator and memoirist, Grande, now a professional writer, shows her ability to reflect, imagine, and combine the two into mature experience. As children in an impoverished Mexican community, Reyna and her siblings dream of a better life—but, for them, a better life means simply having both parents. She grows up frequently parentless, misguided, and troubled by conflicting memories and hopes. While she craves the attention and approval of her parents, she tries to survive in a strange new environment once her father brings her to America.
At odds with both of her parents, she rarely lashes out, due to her natural shyness and tendency to avoid conflict. On the other hand, she is a star student, determined to go to college, with a particular interest in Latino literature. She admits that her short stature and accent have at times caused her some embarrassment or ridicule; in first grade, her teacher punishes her simply for being left-handed.
At first she seeks her father’s attention, but eventually she reaps the rewards of her efforts in other ways—she becomes leader of the marching band, gets scholarships, wins writing awards. Her father shows no interest, doesn’t attend her events, and never congratulates her. Despite her father’s negligence and failure to celebrate her accomplishments, Reyna continues to discover herself and separate herself, reluctantly, from her past. By the book’s end, she has let go of the pain of her difficult upbringing and forgiven her father.
Natalio Grande (Papi)
Natalio Grande is a contradictory figure. As a laborer since the age of nine, he has little education. Although he eventually lives in America, he doesn’t put much effort into learning English. An alcoholic, he goes into violent rages and beats all of his children, even breaking Reyna’s nose. However, he is interested in self-improvement and believes in the power of education. In his rare sober moments, he can be gentle and attentive, even taking time to pull the nits from Reyna’s hair when she gets head lice.
Reyna resembles her father, with the same skin tone and facial features, but at times this resemblance upsets her, as Reyna ends up reminding her mother of her father’s violence. Even their hands are the same shape. His hand are calloused from work—he is a handyman at a retirement home.
Early in Reyna’s life, he is simply The Man Behind the Glass. Because of Reyna’s miserable treatment from her mother and grandmother, she fantasizes about him as a hero, though she has little memory of him—just a framed photo. Reyna has a chance to spend more time with her father after his wife Mila leaves him, but that phase is short-lived: Mila agrees to take him back if he’ll keep Reyna and her siblings away from her, and he agrees.
Eventually his alcoholism destroys his liver, and doctors put him on life support. Reyna and her siblings gather by his bedside and allow the staff to disconnect him, as there is no hope for recovery.
Juana Grande (Mami)
Juana Grande comes in and out of Reyna’s life repeatedly. Her treatment is even worse than Reyna’s father’s. She works selling Avon products until Reyna’s father calls her to come to America with him. She later tries to earn income be selling snacks and cigarettes outside of a country club in Iguala, and later she works at a record shop. She abandons Reyna again and again, at one point moving in with a wrestler and joining him in Acapulco. Reyna eventually learns that her father once attacked her in a violent rage, armed with a gun. She wonders if this incident might explain her behavior.
Once Reyna has moved to America, she learns that her mother, too, has come north. As is typical of her character, she doesn’t inform her own children that she is nearby. She works as a seamstress, collects beer cans for recycling, and lives on welfare and in poverty in Los Angeles with her new boyfriend and a new baby. While Reyna’s father has at least tried to secure her future by getting her a green card, her mother makes no attempt. She is emotionally distant, and finally Reyna recognizes that her mother will always be that way.
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