A perfect selection for my ESL book club, Ms. Grande trail blazes a new path for her family as she strives to find what she feels she can authentically call home. An amazing role model for all first generation university students, Ms. Grande became an award winning author.

Reyna Grande spans cultures and borders to explore coming of age as a young immigrant in California. Picking up where Reyna Grande's first memoir THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US leaves off, in A DREAM CALLED HOME we follow Reyna north from Los Angeles to the University of California at Santa Cruz. She arrives as a shy transfer student, insecure in many ways except for her love of literature, writing, and her quest to build a secure future. She is armed with determination, grit, and a brand new computer purchased on credit. At UCSC, Reyna struggles to fit in, finds mentors, and claims space to write while juggling studies, odd jobs, and making rent. She joins a folklorico dance group and deepens ties with other Latinx students and dancers. She also steps up to parent her rebellious, teenaged little sister, Betty, who moves to Santa Cruz to finish high school. This memoir is a beautiful testament to the transformative power of higher education, and celebrates education as a path forward for recent immigrants.

The tone here is honest and matter of fact, facing tough times as well as misadventures in work, love, and family relationships. After college, Reyna realizes she cannot make a living purely from writing, so she accepts a teaching assignment in one of the toughest middle schools in Los Angeles. For the author, "home" is many things: sticks and stones of her childhood home in Iguala, Guerrero, Mexico, a garage, a shared apartment, a dorm room, a foreclosed wreck in one of Los Angeles' most dangerous neighborhoods, and ultimately, a book built of dreams and words.

Now, when geographic borders are becoming more pressurized, when the borders between cultures are often blurred in an increasingly global political economy, A DREAM CALLED HOME reminds us that language and literature hold the power to heal and also to build bridges between people and families. Will appeal to fans of Michelle Kuo's READING WITH PATRICK and Clementine Wamariya's THE GIRL WHO SMILED BEADS. Readers who want a courageous and timely memoir about the Mexican-American immigrant experience will find much to love in Grande's memoirs. This book offers encouragement to Dreamers and families with roots in two countries. Essential reading. A community builder of a book.

A DREAM CALLED HOME by Reyna Grande is a fascinating look at the life experience of a young girl who was left with her grandmothers in Mexico when her parents came to the United States in an effort to find a better life. Eventually, she was able to join them, but circumstances had dramatically changed for her and her siblings. The parents were no longer together and once again she struggled with abandonment issues while also trying to build a life for herself. Hard work led Grande to college and she writes movingly about that experience and her subsequent jobs and life as a single mother. Though simply written, the book is sprinkled with photos and Grande is so honest that reading it feels like talking with a close friend. While it is sometimes difficult to reflect on the narrow choices she faced, it is certainly inspirational to share in the resilience which Grande exhibits. Highly relevant to events today, A DREAM CALLED HOME received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and praise from established writers like Sandra Cisneros and Luis Alberto Urrea. Grande is a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist for her earlier work, The Distance Between Us; both titles will prompt much discussion.

I couldnt put this book down! I loved learning about Reyna's past and how it helped mold her future. Her family dynamic has such struggles, but she handles so much of it with such grace. She is so tough! This was a really great read.

Reyna Grande’s memoir “The Distance Between Us” brought to life the heart-breaking experience of a young girl left behind in Mexico when her parents illegally immigrated to America. She continues her story in the brilliantly written and emotionally affecting “A Dream Called Home.” After she is finally brought to America she pursues her dream of a college education and becoming a writer. Her path is filled with hardship and feeling that she doesn’t belong, no matter where she is. Despite the many obstacles she faces, she pursues her dream with fortitude and tenacity. Grande writes with luminous prose of her struggles and successes and the result is an extremely relevant, compelling, heartfelt, and inspiring book.

My review was posted on Goodreads on 10/7/18.

A Dream Called Home
A Memoir
by Reyna Grande
Atria Books
Biographies & Memoirs
Pub Date 02 Oct 2018
I am reviewing a copy of A Dream Called Home through Atria Books and Netgalley:
Reyna Grande was only nine when she walked across the U.S Mexico border in search of a home, she was desperate to be reunited with the parents who had left her behind when they had tried to pursue a better life in Los Angeles! She was disappointed to find a mother who just did not seem to care a Fathef who was an abusive alcoholic and a school system who seemed to care nothing about her heritage.
Reyna found refuge in words with so little resources at her disposal, it is her love for reading and writing that allows her to rise above and achieve the seemingly impossible. She achieves the impossible and is accepted to the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Her acceptance to University of California Santa Cruz was a triumph the actual experience of College was intimidating at first and Unfamilar but she perserveres despite the fact she is once again estranged from her family.
Reyna had a fierce determination to make the impossible, possible. She went from an undocumented immigrant with little means.
I give A Dream Called Home five out of five stars!

I'm a sucker for memoirs, but Grande's memoir is so beautiful and makes me want to read the rest of her body of work immediately! Grande's writing is vivid, yet feels simple and approachable. It's clear the amount of effort she put into picking just the right words to convey her message so gracefully, and I'm looking forward to her fiction works.

Grande is an immigrant from a small town called Iguala, Mexico. She moved to the US as a kid, and began to pursue her writing at a young age of 13. Her love of writing helped her get through her tough times, and inspired her to keep pushing for her dreams. This memoir tells her story to become a published author, and culminates in the publication of her first novel. Her family system and friendships are intrinsic to her success as an author, both her motivation and her struggle, so woven throughout are tales of her family and ever developing relationships.

Grande is brave in sharing this story, and I'm grateful that she has made space for her voice in the world of publishing, turning down offers that would have required her to lose part of her voice as an immigrant. Her story is important to hear, and incredibly validating (I would imagine) for immigrants reading it now.

Her story as a single mother is equally inspiring to me, how she was able to continue making hard choices that would allow her to pursue her dreams while maintaining a home for her child. I could not imagine being in her situation, and continuing to have hope that things would be okay. With these experiences, she is able to deconstruct her mother and father's points of view to help herself understand her own trauma and process why they made the choices they made. She opens herself up to seeking to understand, rather than becoming mired in pain from choices that hurt her when she was growing up. This kind of processing is amazing to see written on the page, and I hope it can help others process their own trauma in a healthy way.

I’m working on my #ReadAfrica2018 reading project, but had to take a break for Reyna Grande’s A Dream Called Home - and I’m so glad I did! Although now I feel like I have opened a new door to a new reading challenge as she mentions so many writers and poets that I know I need to read! I have taken their names down and will keep it on the back burner for next year. Also, quite fittingly, it’s Hispanic Heritage Month here in the US, so this was a brilliantly timed memoir, both in terms of Reyna being a writer born in Mexico, and also an immigrant in the US.

A Dream Called Home is Reyna’s story of fighting for her dreams, despite her background, despite the setbacks and roadblocks, and despite the clichés and boxes people tend to stuff one another in here in the US (although that definitely doesn’t just happen here). She wrote about her story as a young Mexican girl crossing the border into the US in her memoir The Distance Between Us, and A Dream Called Home is the story of becoming an adult in a world where she never really feels at home. Each book can be read alone though.

Reyna’s parents left her and her siblings with their grandmothers in Iguala, Mexico, when they were children, and crossed the border to the US. Iguala, at the time, and most likely still today, was extremely poor, and opportunities were few and far between. Reyna’s father came back to collect them when Reyna was about 9 and they made the difficult crossing together three times (the first two times they were sent back). That itself amazes me - the crossing is so hard for an adult, I can’t even imagine how tough it would have been on a young child. Her strength and perseverance have always been there…

Anyway, in A Dream Called Home Reyna starts with her years at university, and moves on to telling the stories of how she became a teacher, a single mother, and how she continued to push herself to write and to be published. I don’t think I can express how inspiring this book was to me, and how there were some areas that I related to (but more that my partner relates to, our own stories and immigration stories meet and differ in many places). I will be buying a copy of this book for my children, so that when they are older they will understand some of the choices their parents had to make, and also know that the world is theirs, and their voices have as much weight as other voices.

Reyna’s recollections are full of many profound statements that hit me hard: that feeling of not belonging anywhere anymore, a double identity that doesn’t fit in here or there. I still carry that with me wherever I go. Reyna has inspired me to keep pushing with my own stories and my own writing, and inspired me to keep reading and talking about the stories that no one wants to talk about.

“As with the moon, there is the face that we immigrants show to the world, but our second face is the one we keep hidden in darkness so that no one can see us weeping.”

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance copy!

This is one of the best books I have ever read. Reyna really makes you feel as if you are apart of her world. I found myself feeling for her heartbreak, celebrating in her victories and loving her success. Her writing style is amazing and really makes you feel engaged. I am glad that this is the first book that I have read of hers because I now know how she came to be and feel as though I will engage and connect on a different level with her other books. Adding her to my list of favorite authors. Thank you for the opportunity to see a bit of your world.

I loved this memoir. Though I never read the author's first memoir I am going to pick it up now that I have read this one. This tells tbe story of Renya, a resident alien, who came here by crossing tbe border illegally. She got her green card at 15 and is now on her way to fulfill the American Dream by attending college and graduating. This is her story of college, graduation, and finding a job. It is her story of living her American Dream. I loved the writing in this book and couldn't put it down. I recommend it.

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a review copy in exchange for my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

Grande"s second memoir is as touching as the first. She picked up with attending college and discovering who she really is. Along the way, the author grapples with continuing family struggles, her own identity, and debt. After her college graduation, Grande became a teacher and continued her success as an author, She has tempestuous relationships until finding the one that works for her. A Dream Called Home is an inspiring story about a woman who refused to give up on anything.