Dual Identity In Reyna Grande's The Distance Between Us

Across a Hundred Mountains narrates the fictional story of Juana a young girl who leaves her small town of Guerrero, Mexico to find her father, who had left his family to find work in the United States. The story is narrated through two different voices, Juana’s and Adelina’s belonging to the same character. Juana is the young girl in Guerrero living under extreme poverty. In her journey to the U.S. she enchanters Adelina, a young prostitute and U.S. citizen at the border, who tragically dies. Juana adopts her legal identity, crosses the border and lives in the U.S. as Adelina. However, she does not abandon her mission to find her father, meaning that even though under her legal identity she is Adelina she is still Juana. It is this conflicting and dual identity that makes this novel particular. This was Reyna Grande’s first pushed novel and even though it is a fiction it has been stated by Grande that it greatly based on her personal life and that it reflect her fears of losing her family due to immigration.
On the same manner, The Distance Between Us: A Memoir is a personal collection of Reyna Grande’s immigration story. Half of the memoir narrates her experiences growing up in poverty before and after both of her parents had immigrated to the United States. The narrative of Grande in Guerrero highlights the difficulties that the …show more content…
In The Distance Between Us: A memoir Reyna Grande’s arrival in the U.S. and her first time attending an American school. In the same way, Grande’s first return to her native town puts her in a stage of social liminality since she has changed and is no longer fully incorporated. On the other hand, in Across a Hundred Mountains social liminality is best observed in the dual identity of Juana (Adelina) as she incorporates some aspects to U.S. society, but does not abandon her internal strives that belong to