A Dream Called Home

June 1, 2018

Grande's The Distance Between Us, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, explained how at age nine Grande immigrated to this country alone to find her parents. Here she explains how she earned a college degree and, in a journey as arduous as that first one, became a writer.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 6, 2018
Novelist Grande (The Distance Between Us) writes with strength and passion of her life’s journey—from her birth in a shack in the poverty-stricken Mexican town of Iguala, to success as an author in the U.S. The memoir opens with Grande leaving Los Angeles to attend UC Santa Cruz at age 21, on her way to becoming the first in her family to earn a college degree; her parents, both naturalized citizens, were not educated beyond elementary school. Grande then recounts her difficult childhood: her parents divorced and left her with her grandmother in Mexico; at age nine, after two failed attempts, Grande made it across the border with the aid of her father, who returned from the U.S. to help her and two older siblings get to L.A. She worked hard in school, graduated with honors from college, and landed a teaching job in L.A. Grande explores the complicated relationships of her uprooted family, dissecting a history of abuse (her grandmother verbally and physically abused her mother, who in turned abused Grande and her siblings) and vowing to break the cycle. After winning a PEN fellowship, marrying, and publishing her first novel, Grande discovered that writing her story could help her make sense of her troubled past and gain the courage to create a stable life for herself and her new family. This uplifting story of fortitude and resilience looks deeply into the complexities of immigration and one woman’s struggle to adapt and thrive in America.

August 15, 2018
An award-winning author's account of how she became the first person in her family to attend college and live the dream of becoming a writer.When Grande (The Distance Between Us, 2012, etc.), a former undocumented Mexican immigrant, left Los Angeles in 1996 for the University of California, Santa Cruz, she was both excited and afraid. Two older siblings had dropped out of college, broken her alcoholic father's heart, and made him "[give] up on me." He had also exiled them from his life to facilitate the return of the second wife he had divorced. By the time Grande left community college for UCSC, her main sources of emotional support were a professor and a boyfriend who had been accepted to another college. At first, the author felt out of place on the nearly all-white UCSC campus; gradually, she found a place among other Hispanic students and in the university's creative writing program. But the ghosts of her past continued to haunt her. When, for example, the mother who had abandoned her sent Grande's sister back to Mexico for "running wild," Grande brought the young girl to Santa Cruz only to be profoundly disappointed by her sister's bad behavior. After graduation, she returned to LA idealistic, believing that a degree would automatically grant her success. Instead, she floundered, unsure of how to begin her writing career. Then she stumbled into a teaching job. She began to make her dream of a middle-class life a reality, but at the expense of her writing. Now a single mother but no less determined to succeed on her terms, she earned a place in the Emerging Writers program, where she finally found the creative path she had been seeking all along. Candid and emotionally complex, Grande's book celebrates one woman's tenacity in the face of hardship and heartbreak while offering hope to other immigrants as they "fight to remain" and make their voices heard in a changing America.A heartfelt, inspiring, and relevant memoir.

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September 1, 2018
Award-winning author Grande presents part 2 of her life story. In her first memoir, The Distance between Us (2012), Grande artfully told the grim story of her immigration to California as an undocumented child; in A Dream Called Home, she deftly recounts her distinctly less dramatic college years and her crooked path to a successful literary career. Grande's engaging and frank narrative flows painlessly, leaving no stones unturned as she recalls romantic missteps, complete with cringeworthy moments; the situations and inner struggle that led to her becoming a single mother; and the painful spectacle she was as a novice teacher in front of a class of ruthless eighth-graders. She carries off these scenes and the accompanying interior dialogues with humor and panache. Generous in her success, she gratefully acknowledges the support and motivation she found with teachers and mentors. Supported by lots of publicity, this will be in demand, and both of Grande's memoirs are indispensable acquisitions for all libraries.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)