Introduction
You often view migration as an economic statistic rather than a human rupture that shatters families across borders. When parents leave for El Otro Lado in search of dollars, they strand their children behind in Mexico, sparking years of neglect and abuse.
Reyna Grande explores this trauma in her memoir by detailing her early childhood in Iguala, her parents' repeated departures, and her own dangerous journey north to Los Angeles. You follow her struggle to survive hostile relatives, natural disasters, and poverty before facing the cultural shock and strict discipline of an immigrant household in California.
The book traces this painful arc from abandonment in Mexico to eventual reunification and higher education. You will discover answers to critical questions as you read:
- How does parental migration alter the psychology of abandoned children?
- What physical perils do undocumented youths face at the border?
- Can education heal the deep fractures of a divided family?
1. Life Behind in Mexico
Parents often leave their children behind in Mexico to migrate to the United States in pursuit of American dollars to build permanent homes. Natalio Grande and Mami leave their three children—Mago, Carlos, and Reyna—in the care of Abuela Evila in Iguala de la Independencia to earn dollars on El Otro Lado. You watch Mami leave her suitcase and take a taxicab to the United States, two years after Papi had already migrated, promising to return in one year with him.
When parents migrate to the United States to earn dollars, they often leave their young children in the care of harsh relatives who subject them to neglect and poverty.
Caregivers and Hardships
Abuela Evila treats Reyna, Mago, and Carlos with disdain, forcing them to do endless chores and feeding them oily beans while favoring her other granddaughter, Élida, whose mother sends gifts and money from the U.S. Élida had been living at Abuela Evila's house for six years when Reyna and her siblings arrived.
Élida receives a Walkman and a typewriter from the U.S. and is allowed to lounge in a hammock, while Reyna and her siblings are called little orphans and given only the leftover oil from the frying pan mixed with their beans.
When the children contract head lice, the family uses strongly scented kerosene and head towels as a harsh treatment, threatening to completely shave their heads if they fail. Tía Emperatriz pours kerosene onto the children's hair and wraps it in towels and plastic bags. Carlos removes his towel due to burning pain, so his grandfather shaves his head completely bald.
Both Abuela Evila and Reyna's first-grade teacher punish her for being left-handed, associating the left hand with the devil and forcing her to use her right hand instead. El maestro hits Reyna's hand with a ruler when she tries to write her name with her left hand, making her feel ashamed.
Coping Mechanisms
Iguala de la Independencia is celebrated as the Cuna de la Bandera Nacional, known as the birthplace of the Mexican national flag and the location where the treaty ending the War of Independence was written on February 24, 1821. You stand straight during the morning flag salute at school, swelling with pride as you remember Mago telling you about local history.
Mago comforts you by telling you that your buried umbilical cord acts like a ribbon connecting you to Mami, ensuring that distance cannot sever your bond. Mago takes you to the shack where you were born, points to the spot on the dirt floor where your umbilical cord was buried, and re-tells the birth story.
You and Mago associate your absent parents with specific everyday items:
- Vicente Fernández songs and Old Spice for Papi;
- Avon lipstick, Avon perfumes, and apple shampoo for Mami.
Abuela Evila allows you only two minutes to talk on the telephone during every-other-weekend parent calls. You identify your father's voice and presence when hearing Escuché Las Golondrinas playing on a radio, matching the memory of his black wavy hair and dark brown eyes behind a glass frame.
2. Betrayal and Survival
Returning parents frequently prove unstable and abandon their children once more, forcing older siblings to take on adult labor and endure natural disasters.
Papi and Mami send clothes and shoes from the US for Christmas, but they do not realize how much the children have grown. This results in items that are a size too small and ill-fitting. Mago and Reyna receive identical dresses and patent leather shoes that are a size too small. Carlos receives a shirt and jeans where the sleeves are two inches above his wrists. This physical mismatch starkly symbolizes how little the parents actually know about their children's current lives.
Papi's dream of building a brick and concrete house with modern utilities represents a protective barrier against external dangers. Four years have passed since Papi left for the US, and two years have passed since Mami left, when house construction finally begins. Inspired by the story of the three little pigs where only the brick house survives the wolf, you and your siblings work hard helping build your new house. You believe its completion will bring your family back together and keep you safe.
Material Disconnect
Local traditional remedies are heavily relied upon when professional medical care is inaccessible due to poverty. When a scorpion hidden in your dress stings you on the collar and neck, seventy-one-year-old Abuela Evila and the adults around you initially refuse to pay for a doctor. Tía Emperatriz administers folk remedies like rubbing alcohol, tying onion slices to the stings with cloth strips, and forcing you to swallow a raw egg to keep the poison from hurting you. You are finally taken to a doctor in a taxi the next day.
After two and a half years of absence, Mami returns from El Otro Lado looking like a TV star. She brings a one-year-and-three-months-old baby named Betty born abroad. She quickly grows restless, fights with family, and abandons the children a second time to run away to Acapulco with her new boyfriend Francisco, who does Lucha Libre.
Child Labor and Floods
Faced with extreme poverty and an elderly grandmother who cannot afford to feed everyone, twelve-year-old Mago takes a job selling chicken quesadillas at the train station after school. She works late into the evening and balances her schooling with bringing home leftover food and money to provide for her younger siblings.
A severe rainy season causes the river to flood, submerging homes and forcing families to seek refuge on tables. During a massive flood, your family's shack is completely submerged in water. Shortly after, five-year-old cousin Catalina wanders near the swollen riverbank, falls in, and is found drowned, devastating the family.
3. The Journey North
The desperate drive for family reunification leads children and parents through perilous border crossings, squatting on government land, and repeated migration attempts.
Squatting and Reuniting
When Mami hears the government is giving away land, she sets up a makeshift plot near a river. She leaves young Carlos alone there for weeks to guard the territory while she works.
Mami appoints Carlos as the head squatter to guard their plot by the river. She supplies him with lollipops, comic books, and a bag of little green soldiers until he falls sick with a fever. He wets himself while surrounded by buzzing flies. The harsh midnight chill, morning dew, and lack of sanitation cause him to fall severely ill, forcing Abuelita Chinta to rescue him after two weeks.
When Papi finally calls and arranges a meeting after eight years of absence, the children arrive looking like beggars. They wear torn clothes and are covered in dust and lice. Reyna walks forty-five minutes to Abuela Evila's house. She arrives sweaty and sunburned in cheap plastic sandals with matted hair. She feels profound shame upon finally meeting her father, Natalio, and his new partner, Mila, but they desperately seek his approval.
Papi initially plans to take only Mago and Carlos to the United States. This prompts intense fear of permanent separation and abandonment in Reyna. When Papi states he only has enough money to take one or two children to the U.S., Mago declares she will not go if Reyna is left behind. This forces Papi to agree to figure out how to take all three children.
Crossing the Border
The journey from Iguala to Tijuana takes over two days by bus. A treacherous desert trek on foot guided by a coyote follows. The physical demands of walking through hills under the sun, combined with illness, hunger, and heat, make the crossing exceptionally difficult for children.
During their first attempt to cross the border, Reyna suffers from a severe toothache and fever. Papi has to carry her on his back until a white truck approaches and border patrol agents catch them. When caught by la migra, migrants face terrifying interrogations and the threat of permanent separation at the station.
A border patrol agent with bright blue eyes notices the terrified children waiting in the hallway. He brings them sodas from a vending machine, helping to calm their fears before they are sent back across the border to Tijuana.
Failure on initial border crossing attempts does not deter migrants from repeatedly risking the dangerous journey. After failing twice in the desert, where Reyna even discovers an incapacitated man left behind in the brush, Papi simply states they will try again the next day.
4. Adapting to American Life
Arriving in Los Angeles exposes immigrant children to material abundance, school culture shock, and strict physical discipline from their long-absent father.
After three attempts, you finally cross the U.S. border with your father and a smuggler, eventually arriving in Los Angeles. Following previous failed attempts due to illness and pain, the final crossing involves dodging a helicopter's searchlights by lying flat on the ground, running across a major freeway over a divider wall, and hiding in a car driven by a smuggler named El Güero.
During the freeway crossing, Reyna is scooped up and tossed over the divider wall just in time to avoid the Border Patrol lights.
Upon arriving in Los Angeles, you experience the stark contrasts between your impoverished life in Mexico and American material abundance. Papi and Mila live in a fourplex apartment building on Granada Street in Highland Park, which features indoor plumbing, wall-to-wall carpets, and glass windows. You visit Kmart and later the beach at Santa Monica, but remain haunted by the hidden dangers of your undocumented status.
Mila takes the children to Kmart, the biggest store Reyna has ever seen, where they receive new clothes and shoes to replace those ruined during the border crossing.
Strict Discipline and Growing Up
Starting American school without knowing English creates deep anxiety and a sense of alienation. Reyna is enrolled at Aldama Elementary in the fifth grade, where she is placed at a corner table with an assistant named Mr. López and forced to drop her mother's last name, Rodríguez, because American customs use only one last name.
When Mr. López informs Reyna that she must use only the last name Grande, she feels as though she is being forced to erase her mother.
Papi enforces strict discipline using physical punishment, while you maintain secrets about your hardships to protect the family illusion. Papi frequently uses his belt to punish the children, particularly for bedwetting or missing school, creating an atmosphere of fear despite his role as your long-sought-after father. The children also hide the abuse from their mother in Mexico through carefully curated Polaroid photographs and letters.
When Carlos wets himself in his sleep, Papi drags him into the bathroom and tosses him fully clothed into a bathtub filled with cold water.
American holidays and consumer culture introduce new experiences, but also unintended financial troubles. You experience trick-or-treating for the first time, collecting massive amounts of candy. However, after seeing Santa Claus on a TV commercial, Mago calls the number displayed, resulting in an expensive phone bill that provokes Papi's fury.
Mago, Carlos, and Reyna call a TV Santa Claus hotline, leading Papi to install a physical lock on the telephone dial to prevent future calls.
Navigating medical and dental needs without insurance leads to identity confusion and emotional friction with your stepmother. Because you lack dental insurance, Mila uses her biological daughter Cindy's insurance to take Reyna to the dentist, instructing Reyna to answer to the name Cindy. This creates deep emotional distress and highlights the painful boundaries of belonging in the blended household.
At the dentist's office, Reyna is addressed as Cindy throughout her molar extraction, making her momentarily feel like Mila's true daughter before facing the harsh reality afterward.
- Answer to the name Cindy at the dental office
- Remember you are nine, not ten
Growing up brings physical milestones that clash with the rigid expectations and lack of communication within the household. After receiving a menstruation booklet and a free sanitary napkin at school, Reyna eagerly anticipates becoming a señorita. When Mago gets her period unexpectedly and takes Reyna's saved pad, Papi brutally beats Mago for missing school, unaware of the real reason until Reyna intervenes.
Reyna stops Papi's belt mid-swing by screaming that Mago is menstruating and has become a señorita, causing Papi to immediately stop and retreat in shock.
5. Navigating Divided Loyalties
Adolescence brings new academic achievements and musical outlets, but these successes are shadowed by neighborhood violence, the loss of the dream house, and a divided family.
Transitioning to a cleaner life in the United States does not immediately erase past vulnerabilities like head lice. Reyna is shocked when a school nurse discovers lice in her hair, triggering deep-seated fears that she is still the dirty girl her father left behind in Mexico. Her father, however, responds with unexpected gentleness, spending hours meticulously removing the nits.
At Aldama Elementary, Mrs. Anderson's nurse finds lice on Reyna, leading to a home delousing session by her father Papi. Papi spends two hours delousing Reyna's hair to ensure every nit is gone.
Discovering that the mother has built a new life and family nearby complicates your emotional loyalties. Papi discovers Mami living on San Pedro Street in downtown Los Angeles with a new baby boy named Leonardo and her boyfriend Rey, having left Betty behind in Mexico temporarily. You navigate conflicting loyalties between both parents, eventually visiting Mami every other Sunday.
Papi runs into Mami at a bus stop after she has lived in downtown LA for months without contacting her children. Leonardo is only three months old when you discover him during these visits.
Neighborhoods and Loss
Living in impoverished, gang-affected neighborhoods exposes immigrant families to constant danger and difficult moral choices during emergencies. The family lives in Highland Park near members of the Avenues gang, where drive-by shootings and violence are common occurrences. When a wounded gang member crawls to their gate, Papi refuses to help him out of fear of gang retaliation, prioritizing your family's safety.
A drive-by shooting outside their home leaves a young gang member dying at their front gate while Papi keeps his children indoors. Mila calls 911 after the shooting to summon emergency help.
Financial sacrifices made over years can be abruptly erased by family betrayal, destroying backup plans and dreams. Papi's dream house in Mexico, built through years of remittances and sacrifice, is stolen when Tía Emperatriz coerces Abuela Evila into handing over the family property. Papi makes a risky unauthorized trip across the border to reclaim it, only to return defeated and isolated.
Tía Emperatriz takes over the family land and the dream house, leaving Papi feeling entirely alone and causing him to abandon his adult ESL night classes. Papi spends two weeks away in Mexico trying to recover his house.
Writing and Achievement
Public schools in the United States offer unexpected opportunities like free instrument rentals, leveling the playing field for immigrant children. You discover that unlike in Mexico, instruments at Burbank Junior High School can be borrowed for free. Playing the alto saxophone allows you to express yourself through music without needing fluency in English.
Mr. Adams lets Reyna borrow an alto saxophone for free, providing an outlet where her wetback accent does not matter.
Overcoming language barriers through extensive reading enables immigrant students to achieve academic recognition and validation. After exiting the ESL program and reading voraciously, Reyna enters Burbank Junior High's short-story competition with a tale about separated twins. Winning first place validates her writing, even though the prize consists of non-traveling tickets to the Queen Mary that Papi refuses to visit.
Reyna checks out ten books from Arroyo Seco library every Friday to fuel her reading habit. Reyna wins first place in the Burbank short-story contest and receives a blue ribbon and tickets to the Queen Mary in Long Beach.
10 Key Ideas
- When parents migrate to the United States to earn dollars, they often leave their young children in the care of harsh relatives who subject them to neglect and poverty.
- Mago comforts Reyna by telling her that her buried umbilical cord acts like a ribbon connecting her to Mami, ensuring that distance cannot sever their bond.
- Returning parents frequently prove unstable and abandon their children once more, forcing older siblings to take on adult labor and endure natural disasters.
- The desperate drive for family reunification leads children and parents through perilous border crossings, squatting on government land, and repeated migration attempts.
- Arriving in Los Angeles exposes immigrant children to material abundance, school culture shock, and strict physical discipline from their long-absent father.
- Papi enforces strict discipline using physical punishment, while the children maintain secrets about their hardships to protect the family illusion.
- Adolescence brings new academic achievements and musical outlets, but these successes are shadowed by neighborhood violence, the loss of the dream house, and a divided family.
- Tía Emperatriz takes over the family land and the dream house, leaving Papi feeling entirely alone and causing him to abandon his adult ESL night classes.
- Playing the alto saxophone allows Reyna to express herself through music without needing fluency in English.
- Winning first place in the Burbank short-story contest validates Reyna's writing, even though the prize consists of non-traveling tickets to the Queen Mary that Papi refuses to visit.