Book Review: By Daniel A. Olivas
This review first appeared in the
El
Paso Times
on April 16, 2006]
Across a
Hundred Mountains
By Reyna Grande
Atria Books, New York
ISBN 0-7432-6957-8
272 pp., $23.00 (2006)
As the public discourse
over undocumented immigration becomes more heated and, at times,
outright ugly particularly in the blogosphere, attacks on such
immigrants are often made in broad strokes and with gross
generalizations. This should not be a surprise because it is easier
to denigrate and reject a group of people if you dehumanize them and
make them faceless. But that’s where talented writers come in: With
skillful prose, they can focus on a small group of undocumented
immigrants and make their struggles and humanity real to the reader
so that it becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss their plight
with a bumper sticker slogan or the waving of an American flag.
Two years ago, Luis
Alberto Urrea did exactly that with The Devil’s Highway
(Little, Brown), where he brilliantly chronicled the plight of
twenty-six Mexican men who in 2001 crossed the border into an area
of the Arizona desert known as the Devil's Highway; only twelve made
it safely across. The book received wide acclaim and was a finalist
for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction.
Now comes a
fictionalized story of undocumented immigration in Reyna Grande’s
debut novel, Across a Hundred Mountains (Atria Books). In
evocative language that never falls into the trap of bathos, Grande
tells her story in a non-linear narrative with chapters that
alternate between her two female protagonists, Juana Garcia and
Adelina Vasquez. First, we have Juana, a young girl who lives in a
small Mexican village in extreme poverty. When a flood leads to yet
another death in her family—a death that Juana feels responsible
for—Juana’s father believes that he must earn more money to house
his family in safer quarters. He believes that there are abundant
opportunities “en el otro lado” based on a letter from a friend:
“Apá’s friend wrote about riches unheard of, streets that never end,
and buildings that nearly reach the sky. He wrote that there’s so
much money to be made, and so much food to eat, that people there
don’t know what hunger is.”
With such dreams,
Juana’s father decides to leave his family and enter the United
States relying on a fast-talking coyote. After making numerous
promises to send money once he’s found employment, Juana and her
mother hear nothing for years leading to further poverty. Worse
yet, Juana’s father had to borrow money from Don Elias in order to
pay the exorbitant fee charged by the coyote. Once Juana’s father
embarks his journey to the United States, Don Elias swoops down on
Juana’s beautiful mother with ideas as to how repayment can be
made. Eventually, a few years later after no word from her
father—with an abused mother who has fallen into alcoholism—Juana
decides to leave home to find her father.
Juana eventually crosses
paths with a young prostitute, Adelina, in the border city of
Tijuana. They make plans to join forces and sneak into the United
States together. For Juana, there’s a chance to find her long lost
father. For Adelina, there’s hope to cast off the shackles of her
abusive boyfriend/pimp. This friendship is perhaps one of the most
affecting elements of Grande’s narrative. And in a twist
reminiscent of Dickens and that is best left for the reader to
discover, these brave young women end up insinuating themselves into
each other’s life more than one could imagine.
The publisher tells us
that Grande was born in
Guerrero, Mexico in 1975, and that she entered the United States as
an undocumented immigrant at nine years of age. Despite such
obstacles, Grande earned her B.A. in Creative Writing from the
University of California at Santa Cruz and was a 2003 PEN USA
Emerging Voices Fellow.
In other words, Grande is living the
American dream and has offered a striking and moving story about
people who have traveled the same dangerous journey that she did.
Across a Hundred Mountains is a beautifully
rendered novel that maintains its power throughout because Reyna
Grande keeps control over her language and does not feel a need to
trumpet emotionally volatile scenes of alcohol and drug abuse, rape,
poverty and infant mortality. This is a breathtaking debut from a
young writer who has a remarkable literary future before her.
______________________________________________________________________________
Daniel
A. Olivas is the author of four books including Devil Talk:
Stories (Bilingual Press, 2004) and a children’s book,
Benjamin and the Word / Benjamin y la palabra (Arte Público
Press, 2005). He is the editor of Latinos in Lotus Land: An
Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature,
forthcoming from Bilingual Press in 2007. His website is
www.danielolivas.com and
can be reached at
olivasdan@aol.com. |