[Karen Menendez Coller, Executive Director, Centro Hispano of Dane County]

Thank you so much for coming here to Centro tonight. I see a lot of new faces, which is really refreshing because as an agency that’s been in this community for 33 years, we strive to create community here.

I’ve been at Centro for about three years, and there have been significant changes in the way our Latino families and our neighbors have grown and established themselves here. But our task is still very much the same. We continue to focus on programs that strengthen youth, strengthen adults, and strengthen neighborhoods because our job is yet to be finished. And I think a lot of rhetoric that you hear out there points to that. That there’s a need to strengthen our families and to have events like this where we bring this conversation to those in the community that perhaps don’t know enough about us.

So, tonight, I’m very proud that we have here such a wonderful voice in Reyna. She’s such a wonderful voice in our Latino community, and we get to share her with you so that you become even more familiar with the complex dreams of our families in Wisconsin and the families that we serve here in Centro. And they’re complex because they are the dreams of fathers, of mothers, of children, intertwined with challenges, life passages, and so on.

So, you know, I heard Reyna speak at the Madison Public Library. I guess it was last winter. It was really, really cold.

[laughter]

Araceli Esparza, who’s here, who’s a beautiful artist in this community, invited me to come and introduced me to Reyna. And what I felt in that reading is that I had a connection to her and her story. And no matter how cold it was, I felt like I was at home. And I think that’s what her book does to so many in our community.

So, Reyna Grande, as you may have read on her website, is an award-winning novelist and memoirist. She has received an American Book Award, the El Premio Aztlan Literary Award, and the International Latino Book Award. In 2012, she was a finalist for the prestigious National Books – Book Critics Circle Awards, and in 2015, she was honored with a Luis Leal Award for Distinction in Chicano and Latino Literature. Her novels, Across a Hundred Mountains, and Dancing with Butterflies, were published to critical acclaim. Now, The Distance Between Us, her latest memoir, reflects on her life before and after immigrating from Mexico to the U.S.

Before we go on and welcome Reyna, I also want to thank our sponsors for tonight, without whom we wouldn’t be able to do this. Wisconsin Public Television, our presenting sponsor, they’re taping the event tonight. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies program, the International Division of the University, the Collaborative for Education Research at – at University of Wisconsin-Madison, otherwise known as The Network, Grzeca Law Group Inc., Madison Magazine, the Cap Times, the Madison Reading Project, and Brava Magazine. And lastly, I also want to thank Food Fight Group – Restaurant Group for donating the food tonight. If you hadn’t had a chance to taste it, go ahead and go to the back, after the reading and Q&A, to have a little more.

But without any further delay, I want to welcome Reyna Grande and give her a big, warm welcome from Madison again.

[applause]

If you don’t speak Spanish, let me tell you that the name Reyna Grande means Big Queen.

[laughter]

But it’s a very hard name to live with when you’re only five feet tall, let me tell you.

[laughter]

I don’t know what my mother was thinking, but I do have an aunt whose – whose name is Empress Grande. The Big Empress.

[laughter]

Emperatriz Grande. So, yeah, I think the Grandes are obsessed with royalty or something. I don’t know.

[laughter]

So, I am very, very, very honored to be here tonight. I think one question you might be wondering is, how often do I come to Wisconsin? And I have to tell you that I’ve been coming for the past 12 years. My husband is from Wisconsin. He was born in Racine. And I think he was made in Madison because this is where my – my father-in-law and mother-in-law met, here at the university.

[laughter]

And they lived here for a while, and then my husband was born in Racine, not too long afterward. So, he has family. Grandma lives in Cambridge, which is not too far from here. And then the rest of the family lives in the woods in Manitowish Waters, which is actually one of my favorite places in the world now because it’s really beautiful. So, I – I feel very much at home here in Wisconsin since I’ve been coming for 12 years. I do enjoy the summers a lot more than the winters, I have to say.

[laughter]

But it’s always a wonderful place to come and – and visit, and I always feel very, very welcomed when I come here.

So, I want to thank Karen and Centro Hispano for inviting me to be here tonight to share my story with you. I say that as an immigrant and also as a writer, it is such a privilege to – to be asked to share my story and to feel that my voice is being heard because immigrants struggle to have our voices heard, and writers also struggle to have our voices heard. So, it is such an honor to be here. So, I want to thank Karen and Centro Hispano and also our sponsors because they’re the ones who make this event possible. And also thank you for being here tonight because without you it wouldn’t be an event. So, thank you so much.

Ultimately, my dream for – for all of us is for our voices to be heard and to feel that our stories matter.

So, tonight’s event is called An Evening of Dreaming, and I want to thank you, too, for coming here to celebrate dreams, especially the immigrant dream. So, you might know this already, but immigrants are the biggest dreamers. And it takes a lot of faith to – to hold on and to believe in a dream. It takes a lot of tenacity and perseverance and something that, in Spanish, is called Ganas. Ganas: to turn a dream into a reality.

So, tonight, I’m going to be talking to you about my latest book, which is The Distance Between Us, –

[slide featuring the title – Reyna Grande – and two versions of the book cover for her book, The Distance Between Us]

– and the book came out a few years ago and it has gone on to have a really wonderful journey. Many universities across the country have chosen The Distance Between Us for their freshman read or for their common read. Communities in – in-

[Reyna Grande, on-camera]

– across the U.S. have picked the book for their One Book, One Community. A few years ago, the state of Maryland chose The Distance Between Us for their One Book, One Maryland, and that was such a fantastic thing for a whole state, right, to – to pick my book. And, granted, Maryland is a little state.

[laughter]

But it’s still kind of cool to say that a state was reading my book. So, yeah.

So, now The Distance Between Us is getting republished for young readers. I did write the book for an adult audience. And this September, the book is being –

[return to the slide featuring the two variation of the book cover for The Distance Between Us]

– reissued by Simon & Schuster’s children’s division, Aladdin, for young readers. So, it’s going to be available for 10- to 14-year-olds. So that, to me –

– has been a really wonderful experience because I really think it’s important for our young people to have a mirror in which they could – they could see themselves. And I struggled as an – as an immigrant – as a child immigrant, I always struggled to find books that I could relate to. And a lot of the books that I read when – when I was learning English were books like Sweet Valley High and The Babysitter’s Club.

[laughter]

And, you know, there were no Latino characters in those books, and it was really hard for me. And I always asked myself, Well, where am I?, you know, Do I not exist? Because I couldn’t see myself in those books. So that’s why, for me, like it’s – its really special to be able to have this book and to offer it as a mirror for our Latino youth. And then, for our non-immigrant youth, to be able to – to share this story so that they can understand, you know, their peers, the – the other students that they go to school with. And I’m really hoping that, you know, this will help to remind our young people where they come from and to recognize, you know, as Joe mentioned earlier, that this is a nation of immigrants, and we did come from somewhere.

So, this is what – what I’m going to be speaking to you about, is about The Distance Between Us. And in the book, I write about dreams. That is the – the theme of the book. And there’s a quote that I – that I start the book with that says: Nothing happens unless first we dream. And that is from the poet Carl Sandburg. And I do believe with all my heart that nothing happens unless first we dream. And I am where I am today because of my – of the dreams that my family dared to dream. And I’m sure that all of you are where you are today for the same reason. Because we dare to dream.

So, I’m gonna show you just some pictures as I go along with my talk. And then, after I’m done – I’m gonna – oh, Im gonna read a couple of excerpts from the book, and then when I’m done, I’ll open it up for questions. So, if you guys have any questions, feel free to ask me anything you want because I’m literally an open book.

[laughter]

So, my journey began in Mexico in a city called Iguala Guerrero. And Iguala Guerrero is known as the birthplace of the –

[slide titled – Iguala, Cuna De La Bandera Nacional – featuring a photo of the city of Iguala with a large Mexican flag blowing on a flagpole]

– Mexican flag. So, it’s like the Philadelphia of Mexico. So, it’s Cuna de la bandera nacional. So, like Philadelphia –

[new slide featuring a map of Mexico and showing the locations of Iguala and Mexico City and their proximity]

– it’s also about three hours from the capital. But unlike when you drive from, you know, Philadelphia to D.C., when you drive from Mexico City to Iguala –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– you actually feel like you’re driving into another world because the two couldn’t be, you know, so different. Mexico City is a big city with millions of people. A metropolitan with a lot of culture too, you know, a lot of old buildings. But it’s – its very, very different than when you come into my city, which is very small and very, very poor.

One of the things that we do boast is that the biggest Mexican flag in the country flies over the city of Iguala.

[slide featuring a photo of the large Mexican flag that flies over the city of Iguala with large mountains in the background]

And it’s surrounded by very beautiful mountains, and I’m sure those of you who’ve read my first book Across a Hundred Mountains, and also in –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– The Distance Between Us I write about the mountains because they played a big part in my – in my childhood.

Iguala, like I said, is, you know, very, very poor because it’s located in the state of Guerrero. And Guerrero –

[slide featuring a photo of several ramshackle homes along a dirt road in the city of Iguala]

– is the second poorest state in Mexico. 70% of the population there lives in poverty. When you’re driving from Mexico City from the airport –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– to Iguala, that’s the first thing you see when you enter the city is a lot of dirt roads and shacks and most people there are still living without running water. And some people are still living there with no electricity. So, there hasn’t been a lot of progress. And once in a while you hear that Mexico is doing better or that the economy is doing better, but that’s – thats true like in big cities like Mexico City or Guadalajara, but that progress never really reaches little places like Guerrero, like Iguala.

There’s so many things happening in my city that – that I want to tell you about.

[slide featuring a close-up photo of poppy plants in bloom in Mexico]

First, is that due to the – the heroin epidemic that we’re dealing with here in the U.S., that has –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– affected my city in Iguala because Guerrero – because, you know, Mexico is the number one supplier of heroin to the U.S., and the state of Guerrero grows the most crops for the heroin trade. So, my city of Iguala is a distribution center for the Cartel. And there are about 200 pounds of – of heroin paste that gets shipped out of Iguala every week and delivered to places like Los Angeles and Chicago. So, that is one thing that the mountains that surround my hometown –

[return to the slide with the photo of poppy plants]

– are now covered in poppy fields.

And the other thing –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– about Guerrero, in addition to being the second poorest state, it’s also now the most violent state in Mexico.

[slide featuring a photo of a Mexican Federal Police officer behind a machine gun which is in a Jeep]

And so, when you enter my city, the first thing you see are the federal police patrolling the city. There – there are no state police and no local police anymore. They have been removed. So, now it’s the federal police that’s always patrolling the city.

[new slide featuring a photo of the City Hall in Iguala which is on fire]

And you will also see the city hall in Iguala, which got burned down, is now being repaired after it got burned down during a protest.

[new slide featuring the headshots of forty-three male students who have disappeared from the local university]

And Iguala has now become a place where college students can disappear overnight. Just like what happened in 2014 where 43 students disappeared in my hometown –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– and to this day they have not been found. We still don’t know what happened to them. Many people have been arrested, but nobody has been tried yet. And there’s still so many unanswered questions, and the Mexican government continues to sabotage the investigation. And, again, we – we still don’t know where the students were taken or why or what happened to them. And that has really affected the city, you know? The – the feel of the city, the people who live there. So, it’s been a – a tragedy that, you know, because we still don’t know what happened, it’s still very raw and – and very painful and people there can’t – cant move on. They can’t move on. They can’t heal.

And also due to the disappearance of the students, more and more disappeared have – have been – what can I say? More people who have families who have disappeared have come out and say, You know, it’s not – it wasn’t just 43. It’s actually thousands and thousands of disappeared in Mexico. And the mountains that surround my hometown are covered in graves.

[slide featuring a photo of a mass grave that was found near Iguala]

So, to this day, ever since the students disappeared, they found over 120 mass graves around the place where I grew up.

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

So, that has – that is my Iguala. That’s my hometown. And I talk about this because it’s really important to always know, like, you know, where immigrants come from, right? And what is happening in their – in their towns – in their – in their countries that is causing the migration.

So, with my family, you know, a lot of these things hadn’t happened yet. My family immigrated here due to the economy and the poverty and the lack of opportunities. But now that the people that are migrating from my hometown are migrating for not just the poverty, but now because of the – the violence and the stability and all of these things that are happening in my town.

So, back then, in Iguala, I lived there with my family, and it was me –

[slide featuring a black and white photo of Rayna as a little girl barefoot holding a toy elephant]

– I was the youngest, and my brother –

[the slide animates on a black and white photo of Raynas brother Carlos as a small boy in swimming trunks]

– Carlos, and my sister –

[the slide animates on a black and white photo of Raynas sister Mago as a small child barefoot in a summer dress]

– Mago. And the three of us, we lived with our mother.

[new slide featuring a photo of Rayna with her siblings as elementary students along with their mother]

And, for me, you know, this picture is really special because that was the last picture that we took with my mother. And one day, things changed for the family, and that’s where I start the book, –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– with the day when everything changed for me and my siblings. So, I’m gonna read to you the very beginning of The Distance Between Us just to introduce you to the story and to – to the – to the day that changed my life, okay?

My father’s mother, Abuela Evila, liked to scare us with stories of La Llorona, the weeping woman who roams the canal and steals children away. She would say that if we didn’t behave, La Llorona would take us far away where we would never see our parents again. My other grandmother, Abuelita Chinta, would tell us not to be afraid of La Llorona. That if we prayed, God, La Virgen, and the saints would protect us from her. Neither of my grandmothers told us that there’s something more powerful than La Llorona, a power that takes away parents, not children. It is called the United States.

In 1980, when I was four years old, I didn’t know yet where the United States was or why everyone in my hometown of Iguala, Guerrero, referred to it as El Otro Lado, the Other Side. What I knew back then was that El Otro Lado had already taken my father away. What I knew was that prayers didn’t work because if they did, El Otro Lado wouldn’t be taking my mother away, too.

It was January 1980. The following month, my mother would be turning 30, but she wouldn’t be celebrating her birthday with us. I clutched on my mother’s dress and asked, How long will you be gone? Not too long, was her response. She closed the latch on the small suitcase she had bought secondhand for her trip to El Otro Lado, and I knew the hour had come for her to leave. It’s time to go, Mami said as she picked up her suitcase. My sister Mago, my brother Carlos, and I grabbed the plastic bags filled with our clothes. We stood at the threshold the little house we had been renting from a man named Don Ruben and looked around us one more time.

Mami’s brothers were packing our belongings to be stored at my grandmother’s house: a refrigerator that didn’t work, but that Mami hoped to fix one day, the bed Mago and I had shared with Mami ever since Papi left, the wardrobe we decorated with El Chavo del Ocho stickers to hide the places where the paint had peeled off. The house was almost empty now.

Later that day, Mami would be handing the key back to Don Ruben, and this would no longer be our home, but someone else’s. As we were about to step into the sunlight, I caught a glimpse of Papi. My uncle was putting a photo of him into a box. I ran to take the photo from my uncle. Why are you taking that? Mami said, as we headed down the dirt road to Papi’s mother’s house where we’d be living from then on. He’s my Papi, I said, and I clutched the frame tight against my chest. I know that. Mami said. Your grandmother has pictures of your father at her house. You don’t need to take that photo with you. But this is my Papi, I told her again. She didn’t understand that this paper face behind a wall of glass was the only father I had ever known.

I was two years old when my father left. The year before, the peso was devalued 45% to the U.S. dollar. It was the beginning of the worst recession Mexico has seen in 50 years. My father left to pursue a dream: to build us a house. Although he was a bricklayer and had built many houses, with Mexico’s unstable economy, he would never earn the money he needed to make his dream a reality.

Like most immigrants, my father had left his native country with high expectations of what life in El Otro Lado would be like. Once reality set in and he realized that dollars weren’t as easy to make as the stories people told made it seem, he had been faced with two choices: return to Mexico empty-handed and with his head held low or send for my mother. He decided on the latter, hoping that between the two of them, they could earn the money he needed to build the house he dreamed of. Then he would finally be able to return to the country of his birth with his head held high, proud of what he had accomplished. In the meantime, he was leaving us without a mother.

Thank you.

[applause]

So, I started the book there because I really do feel that this is where my journey began. And after my mother left, it was just now the three of us. Just me and my brother and my sister. And so, basically –

[slide featuring a photo of Rayna and her siblings as youngsters dressed in their Sunday best]

– by the time I was four-and-a-half –

[the slide animates on a black and white headshot portrait of Raynas father to the left of the photo of her and her siblings]

– I had no father, and I had –

[the slide animates on a black and white headshot portrait of Raynas mother to the right of the photo of her and her siblings]

– no mother and there was a border that stood between me and my parents.

And, to me, you know, as a little girl, that was really difficult to wrap my head around. To – to have them so far away and to not understand, you know –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– what – what had driven them away. And, you know, children, we don’t understand anything about, you know, the – the economy. We don’t understand anything about when peso – the peso was being devalued and that there were no jobs and that, you know, there were lacks of opportunities. As a child, what I felt was that my parents had left because they didn’t love me enough to stay with me. And – and it really affected me to – to be separated from them and to not know if I would ever see them again.

And when my mother left, we were left behind with my –

[slide featuring a photo of Raynas paternal grandparents]

– paternal grandmother. And I refer to her a lot as my evil grandmother because she was really mean. But also, because her name is – it was Evila, which is spelled like the word Evil with an A.

[laughter]

And I remember the first – when I was learning English and I ran into the word evil in a fairy tale, I said, Ooh, that looks like my grandmother’s name.

[laughter]

And I looked up the definition of evil, and I said, Ooh, that is my grandmother’s name.

[laughter]

So, I know those of you who’ve read the book, you know that my grandmother made life very difficult for us while we lived there. And she was not very happy about being stuck with three grandchildren to raise, and, you know, especially at her age. And – and she – she really did feel being put upon, having to take care of me and my siblings.

So, as the years went by, you know, my siblings and I, we just had each other. And my older sister –

[slide featuring another photo of Rayna and her siblings as youngsters]

– became my little mother, and she did her best to – to provide and to give me love and nurturing.

[the slide animates on another photo of Rayna and her siblings this time with her older sister as a teenager]

And she had to sacrifice her childhood to become a parent, which, for me, it’s also one of the tragedies in my family. You know? That – that something like that –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– had to happen. But she was the one who really helped us to – to deal with the situation, and – and she was also a big dreamer. You know, she would always talk about the dream that when our parents would return, and that’s really, I think, when I – when I became a dreamer because that’s all I had. And I had this dream that one day, you know, our family was going to be put back together again.

[slide featuring a photo of a family made out of paper with the parents and children holding hands]

And that’s what I held on to during the eight years that my father was gone. I held on –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– to that dream with all my heart.

So, when I was almost 10 years old, my father finally came back to Iguala.

[slide featuring a photo of Raynas parents in middle age]

And by the time he came back, a lot of things had changed. The economy in Mexico had gone from bad to worse, and people were not going back home. They were actually continuing –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– to migrate. And, you know, my father and – and – and me, we were part of that biggest wave of immigration from Mexico that lasted for like, how many years? 40 years? So, my father, he couldn’t come back to Mexico because there were still no jobs and the peso kept getting devalued. And also, other things that – that changed in my family was that my parents separated when they were here, and my father left my mom for another woman. So, when he came back to Mexico, he – he came back with this new woman. And – and it was really traumatic for me to meet my father for the first time and then to see a complete stranger next to my father. And it was seeing this woman with my father that – that when I really realized that – that my family was never going to be put back together again.

So, that was a very difficult moment for me, but again, it was an experience that changed my life, when my father came back to Iguala, because he decided to bring us to the U.S. since he wasn’t going to come back anymore. And one of the biggest ironies in my life was that it took my father eight years to build us the house that he dreamed of, and yet we never lived in it. Even for one day.

So, when I was nine-and-a-half, I found myself face to face with the U.S. border. And, for me, it was, you know –

[slide featuring a photo of the tall fencing along the U.S. and Mexican border and a person trying to scale the fence]

– a very shocking experience to see it with my own eyes because this border had stood between me and – and my parents for so long and for me to finally find –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– myself there. And I wasn’t, you know, very concerned about that I was going to lose my life and – because we were about to embark on this dangerous journey across the border. But, for me, the stakes were so much higher than that because the stakes for me were, you know, losing my chance to have a father back in my life, if I didn’t succeed.

So, I’m going to read to you the second excerpt of the book, and then I’ll finish up my presentation, and then I’ll take answers. But I’m going to read to you the – the version in the young reader’s edition. In the – in the original version, the border crossing is only one chapter in the story, but when I did the adaptation for – for young readers my editor asked me to expand the border crossing into three chapters. So, I’m not going to read the three of them.

[laughter]

I’ll just read the – the beginning. So, this is our – our first border crossing. And it was really interesting for me to go back into the book that I had already written and reshape it, you know, and restructure it. And the – the difference between the two is that I cut out about a hundred pages. Even though they look the same, you know, they’re just as thick, but this one the font is bigger, which I really like now because now that I’m like 40, I’m blind and I can – I can hardly read this font anymore.

[laughter]

So, I love the big font. So now I actually like reading from – from this version because I don’t need to put on glasses yet. Alright. So, here’s our first attempt at crossing the border.

Papi checked us into a small hotel. There was only a full-size bed, a night table, a dresser, and a television in the room. Papi said we three could have the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor, he said. The floor was tiled, and I knew it would be uncomfortable – uncomfortable to sleep on, but he said a bigger room costs more. And with any luck, we will only be here for one night, he said. He left us there to watch television, and he went out in search of food and a coyotaje. The smuggler who would take us across.

We watched reruns of El Chavo del Ocho while we waited for Papi. We had never stayed in a hotel before, and we had never watched TV in bed. For the first time, I found myself beginning to enjoy our journey north. Papi came back with tacos and sodas. We head out tomorrow, he said. Eat your food and then go straight to bed. We’ll leave early in the morning.

The smuggler picked us up before sunrise at the hotel and drove us across the city. I was sleepy, and I found myself struggling to stay awake. I wasn’t used to waking up that early, and I was groggy and grumpy. To make matters worse, that morning I had woken up with a tooth ache, and Papi didn’t have anything to give me. My tooth had hurt once in a while, and my grandmother had given me mint leaves to chew on. This time, there was nothing I could do except doze off, hoping that when I woke up the pain would be gone.

Reyna, wake up. We’re here, Mago said. The sun was just coming out when we came to a stop. We got out of the car and looked around. The border turned out to be nothing but dirt and bushes, rocks and weeds, under a light blue sky. This is where we start, the smuggler said. He looked at me and said, Try to keep up, okay? You don’t want to be left behind, do you? I looked at Papi. My stomach clenched at the thought of being abandoned in the middle of nowhere.

The coyotaje must have seen the terrified look on my face because he laughed and patted my head. I’m just teasing. Papi’s face was serious when he looked at us and said, Stay alert and do as the coyotaje says.

The coyotaje led us through a hole in a chain link fence into the vacant land on the other side. We followed in silence. I looked at the ants scurrying around, gathering food. A hawk soared above in the wind. Birds chirped in trees. Lizards crawled under rocks. If I hadn’t been so afraid, I would have been enjoying our adventure. But then I remembered that even though this place was beautiful, it was forbidden land. We were not welcome here.

Once in a while, the coyotaje shouted orders to us and we obeyed. Walk! Hide! Run! Crawl! I wasn’t used to walking and running so much and so fast. My tooth began to hurt even more, and around noon, as we walked through the hills under the heat of the sun, I began to get a fever. Mago put her arm around me so that I could lean on her as we walked, but soon we found ourselves lagging behind. Come on, Reyna, you can do it, Mago said. Maybe we should turn around and go back, the coyotaje said to Papi. He stopped and waited for us to catch up. It’s hard making this journey with children. No, Papi said. We keep going. She’ll be okay.

Papi ended up carrying me on his back. I held on as tight as I could, branches grasping at me as if trying to tear me away from him. I didn’t remember ever being given a piggyback ride by Papi, and I wish we were somewhere else, like at a park having fun, not at the border. Not when I was hungry and sick and terrified of being caught.

My throat felt dry, and I asked for water for the hundredth time that day. Not right now, Papi said again as he struggled up the path. His breaths came in gasps. I knew Papi was getting tired.

Suddenly, a cloud of dust rose in the distance, and before we knew it, a white truck was heading our way. Run! the coyotaje yelled. We rushed into the bushes, and I clung to Papi with all my might as he ran. He dove behind a rock. I gripped him so hard I choked him. He pulled free from my grip and muffled a cough into his arm. Had La Migra heard him?

The truck pulled over and men dressed in green, the men Papi had called La Migra, got out of the truck. Come out, they said. There’s nowhere to hide. They took us to the border patrol station. Mago, Carlos, and I waited in the hallway while the agents took Papi into their office. We didn’t know what they would do to us, to him. We waited and waited. Our eyes hurt from too much crying. Agents passed by without looking at us. More and more migrants arrived. Mostly men and a few women, but no children. Even though they were just as afraid as we were, they looked at us and they smiled, encouraging us. With their eyes, they said to me, Have faith, don’t give up.

I didn’t know how long Papi had been with the agents. I didn’t know what they were asking him or what he was saying. But as the minutes went by, I began to wonder if they would ever let him go. What if they arrested him? Arrested us? What if we never saw each other again? I clutched my brother and sister as fresh tears came out of my eyes.

A border patrol agent with the bluest eyes I had ever seen stopped in front of us and said something to us in English. We shook our heads, feeling stupid because we couldn’t understand him, and we didn’t know how to tell him that. He smiled and went to the vending machine. Then he came back with sodas for us. He patted our heads and walked away. I didn’t realize until then how hungry and thirsty I was. I had been too afraid to think about anything other than my father.

We opened our sodas, and the sweetness of it gave me hope. It was a gift from a border patrol agent. From a gringo with kind blue eyes. Maybe the agents weren’t so bad after all. Maybe they would understand that all we wanted was to have a family, and they would soon let us go. And they would let us keep our dream.

Thank you.

[applause]

Alright. So, you know how the crossing turned out because I’m here now.

[laughter]

So, we did make it. It took us three times. And my dream came true in a way.

[slide featuring a black and white photo of Raynas father sitting at the kitchen table and Rayna standing behind him with her arms around his shoulders]

I had dreamed of having both my parents, but I ended up with just my dad, which, in many ways, I – I think it was a good thing cause my father, more than my mother, had a really, really big impact on the person that I turned out to be.

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

So, there I was with my father. We came to live with him in Los Angeles. And when we arrived in L.A., I thought that I had finally put the border between us and that there would never be another border that I had to get across. But, you know, like most immigrants, when we arrive here, we realize that the U.S. border is really just our first border –

[slide with an illustration of a fence with barbed wire on top of it on the left and the image from the School Crossing sign on the right]

– to overcome. And when we come to this country, there’s so many more borders that we need to get across.

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

And, you know, these are borders like language. You know, the language barrier. There’s a cultural barrier. And then, for many of us, there’s also the legal barrier when we come here without proper documentation. And so, these were so many other borders that – that I had to cross when I arrived.

And at school, when I first started, you know, that was – I realized that school was another border –

[slide featuring a photo of an empty classroom with the desks all lined up in rows]

– that I needed to overcome. And I attended a school that didn’t really have resources for immigrant –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– children. They didn’t have bilingual education. They didn’t have E.S.L. They just had a – a sink or swim, you know, approach to learning English. And I was thrown into a classroom where I didn’t speak the language, and, for me, it was a very difficult experience because it was at school where I first experienced marginalization where, you know, I felt discriminated, where I felt that I didn’t have a voice, and – and I realized that, you know, I was going to have to fight for my right to remain.

But, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I was really lucky to come to live with my father because my father was a very big dreamer. And maybe it’s our –

[slide featuring a photo of hands holding up a wooden cutout of the word Dream in the morning light]

– last name, Grande, that he tried to live up to because he had – he didn’t have little dreams, he had grande dreams, you know. And my father when we got here, he told us that, –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– you know, he brought us here so that we could succeed, and he told us that he expected nothing but As from us from school. And threatened to deport us back to Mexico if we didn’t do well in school.

[laughter]

So, I wasn’t afraid of border patrol. I was afraid of my father cause I knew that he would deport us if we didn’t, you know, get straight As. So, we were really good students, my siblings and – and I, and we were straight A students, and my father talked to us about, you know, going to college one day and having a career one day and being homeowners one day and having money for retirement one day. And, you know, I was 11 years old, and he was telling me about retirement already.

[laughter]

So – so, that was my dad. And one of the things that I really appreciated the most about my dad was that, you know, even though we were undocumented, he would always say, Just because we’re undocumented doesn’t mean we cannot dream. And he was the kind of person that he was always ready for tomorrow. You know, he would tell us, You never know what opportunities might come tomorrow, and we need to be prepared for those opportunities. So, that’s kind of how he taught us to – to live our lives. You know, to always be prepared for what tomorrow might bring.

And, luckily for us, what tomorrow brought was the 1986 amnesty, which legalized the status of three million people. And both of my parents became legal residents because of the amnesty. So, when I was 15 years old – was when our Green Cards arrived in the mail. And I remember that day when my father opened the envelope, and he took out the Green Cards and he gave us each a Green Card. He said, I’ve done my part, the rest is up to you.

And – and that was a very, you know, powerful moment for me because having that Green Card, it – it really allowed me to finally embrace the dreams. You know, to – to not be afraid anymore. To not ask my father, you know, Can we really aspire to all these things you’re talking about? And when that dream – when that Green Card came, you know, it really – I took the Green Card my father handed me, and I ran with it. And so, many dreams came true for me thanks to that opportunity. That, you know, for me, one of the – the reasons why I wrote The Distance Between Us was to really try to emphasize the – what can happen when we give that opportunity, right, to people, and especially to our dreamers. To our immigrant youth. You know, what’s going to happen when we allow them to legalize their status?

So, when I was given that opportunity as a 15-year-old, you know, I went on to – to accomplish all my dreams. So, I dreamt of going to college. And I, you know, I ended up at the community college –

[slide featuring a photo of Rayna with her saxophone in her marching band uniform in front of the entrance to Pasadena City College]

– where I did a lot of great things, and one of them was to participate in the Rose Parade. And that was a – a big dream for me to be in the Rose Parade.

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

And then, from there, I transferred to a four-year university, and I ended up at –

[slide featuring a photo of Rayna in her cap and gown and receiving her diploma from U.C.-Santa Cruz]

– U.C.-Santa Cruz. And there, I became the first in my family to graduate from college.

[applause]

Thank you. Thank you so much.

[applause]

And, you know, for me it was a really big accomplishment because my father only went to the third grade and my mother went to the sixth grade. So, for me, like, it meant, like, once I did it, I was able to break that cycle, you know, that my family had been stuck in. And I knew that – that by me doing it, that meant that I could now guide the rest of my family and the next generation of Grandes through that door.

And it’s just really interesting for me, you know, that experience because it’s – when with my husband, who I said is from Wisconsin, his mother has a master’s degree, his father has a PhD, his sister has a master’s degree, my husband has two master’s degrees, and his aunts and his uncles have PhDs and master’s degrees. I’m like, Geez, you know? And – and I guess, you know, and his family, his father’s side migrated from Finland, and it was his great grandfather who migrated. And, for me, it – it gives me a lot of hope because I feel like maybe two generations from now my great grandchildren are going to be saying that, you know, about the Grande family. So, that’s what I aspire to now. That’s my dream now.

But that’s what it meant to me when I graduated, that – that I started something. And then, also, I, you know, dreamed of being a U.S. citizen, and 10 years ago, I became a U.S. citizen.

[slide featuring a photo of a citizenship class raising their right hands to swear allegiance after completing their citizenship classes]

And then my dream of being a published author came true, and not –

[new slide featuring the covers of Raynas books The Distance Between Us and Across a Hundred Mountains in three different language editions]

– just being published in the U.S., but also being published in other languages abroad.

And then, you know –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– I have my own role models, and these are Latino successful artists –

[slide featuring a photo of Rayna with one of her awards next to actor Edward James Olmos]

– that are my role models. So being – being recognized by them for the things that I’m doing has meant a lot to me as well. So, having that opportunity to meet these role models.

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

And for 20 years, I dreamt of being on the stage with Sandra Cisneros, who’s my, like, idol.

[laughter]

And that dream came true –

[slide featuring a photo of Rayna on the stage of a theatre in conversation with Sandra Cisneros for a book talk]

– last year. And it’s like, man, I waited, like, 20 years but, you know, you just got to hold on to – to those dreams no matter how long it takes.

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

So, for me, you know, what’s driving me now after all these dreams that I’ve been able to accomplish is, you know, I’m continuing to fight for immigrant rights because I – I do feel that, you know –

[slide featuring a photo of a monarch butterfly with the words migrant below it on a poster for immigrants rights]

– that’s my responsibility as an immigrant. And – and I fight against invisibility, you know?

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

And that’s why I always push myself to keep going with my writing because I feel like if – if I’m not writing my stories, then who’s going to write our stories? And so, I fight against invisibility through my work, and I contribute my stories to American literature to remind people that Latinos are part of the American story. And that we need to be part of – of our literature.

So, those of us who have made it, you know, I think all of us here in the room, or many of us here in the room, have made it in – in many ways. We’re still working towards our dreams, but, you know, we have a – a responsibility to keep the dream alive for others, right? And – and that’s something that I take that responsibility very seriously. As Michelle Obama once said in a speech, that we shouldn’t close the door, right? Once we go through the door of opportunity, we shouldn’t close the door. We should leave it open for those coming after us. So, that’s what I try to do with – with my work. And that’s what I encourage all of you guys to do. You know, to keep the door open and to keep helping other people to go through that door. Especially, you know, our immigrant families.

And that’s something that – that Centro is doing beautifully. You know? Keeping that door open, literally. Keeping that door open and helping immigrant families to fight for their dreams. Continuing to – to support our immigrant youth. I think that’s very, very important because, as we know, youth are the future of this country, whether they’re immigrant or not immigrant, you know, we need to make sure that we help them reach their full potential and that we give them those opportunities that they need so that later on they can contribute their talents and their skills to our communities and make this a better place.

Also, you know, right now in terms of immigration, you know, we’re seeing – were living through the biggest immigration crisis in history here in the United States. We’re seeing it happening in Europe, as well. And there are more displaced people in the world today than ever before. So, it’s important, you know, to keep talking about immigration and not just, you know, locally, but globally, you know? Like, what’s going on? And like I said, I am a big dreamer. So, I dream of a world where there is respect for all human beings regardless of where we come from regardless of the color of our skin. But I also think that we need to do some serious soul searching as a country and also as a world because I see that powerful countries have a history of denying or failing to recognize that their acts and their policies create instability in other countries. And what I see is that, you know, first we create catalysts for immigration, and then we punish people for immigrating. So, we – we need to really, you know, start asking ourselves, What are we doing? and How can we change things for the better?

So, just to conclude, and I’m going to open it up for questions after this, is that, you know, I really believe that there has to be a place for immigrants in our hearts –

[slide featuring a photo of upper half of the Statue of Liberty over the top of an image of the American flag]

– in our country, in our literature, and this is, for me, what I’m fighting for the most. This country, as we mentioned earlier, you know, it was founded by –

[Rayna Grande, on-camera]

– immigrants, right? It’s fueled by immigrants. It began as a dream. It was founded by dreamers. And it is dreamers, especially our young dreamers, who will continue to make this country great. So, let us dream together.

Thank you.

[applause]

Thank you so much.

[applause]