Esteemed author Reyna Grande offers readers a convincing collocation of life experiences tethered to pains and triumphs. In MIGRANT HEART, she delves deeply into her personal recollections to reveal plain truths in a panoramic perspective. Noted for highly emotive memoirs of her migrations from Mexico to the US (THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, A DREAM CALLED HOME), she now arrays the futures those books implied.

"[Grande] has the admirable ability to enhearten her audience through her expertise as a wordsmith and acting as an exemplar to others by sharing her personal saga."

One especially illustrative chapter, “A Flight to Remember,” details the hours Grande spent on a plane talking with a young Guatemalan man who was newly released from detention after trying to cross the US border into Texas. Having almost no possessions, he was hoping to reunite with his brother in Sacramento and seek legal asylum. She gave him informed advice, and he later texted her a brief, heart-rending message: “Que dios la bendiga,” which translates to “May God bless you.”

Grande fixes her gaze upon the fears and potential victories of immigrants, nearly all of whom are stricken with extreme poverty, as they must bear the physical deficits of harsh travel and the treatment they will receive from the US Border Patrol. She vividly describes her complex medical problems, including keratoconus, a retinal disorder for which there is no expedient remedy, leaving her to fear the darkness. Grande emotively compares her suffering to the traumas of asylum seekers lost in a miasma of constantly shifting regulations. She shares tales of her birth family, her starkly deprived childhood, and her remarkable ability to conquer perhaps the toughest boundary: language.

Grande’s academic ambitions and sharp intelligence led to “subtractive bilingualism” --- the loss of one’s native tongue in the struggle to gain the ability to speak and write in one’s new, non-native homeland. And she cherishes incidents, experienced with her children, that are focused on such unusual enjoyments as observing local slugs and bugs and one sweet butterfly. Extensive travel in Europe and the deserts of the Southwest US have inspired her “to keep bearing witness, to keep telling these stories.”  

Reyna Grande’s memories, writings, talks and sage observations have garnered her many awards and inclusion in a plethora of educational programs. She has the admirable ability to enhearten her audience through her expertise as a wordsmith and acting as an exemplar to others by sharing her personal saga. Her viewpoints of a woman growing older and enjoying the positive signs of progress among her children and grandchildren will give hope and determination to those who are in the process of overcoming the trials and traumas of oppression, aiding them in discovering life’s higher purpose.