What Influence Did Grande Have on You?

A Sneak Peak:  A Conversation with Reyna Grande

Question: You write about your experience in being left behind by your parents in Mexico and how it affected you during your formative years. Do you believe this experience helped or hindered you to become the person you are today?

 Answer by Grande: It did both. My experience of being left behind helped me because it made me strong. I learned to be independent and self-reliant. It taught me to be a survivor. But it also hindered me because it left me emotionally scarred. My childhood was dominated by my parents’ absence. As a child I felt unloved. I felt abandoned. That, coupled by the abuse I suffered at the hands of my father later in life, gave me a very low self-esteem. For a long time I didn’t have a sense of self-worth, and it took me a long time to finally start to love myself and stop worrying about whether my parents loved me or not. But this experience also affected my ability to love. I loved my parents unconditionally, and yet the way they constantly failed me affected my relationships with others.

I wonder how lives could go totally different and opposite ways even when raised the same way.  Sisters, Mago and Reyna Grande are two totally different people from almost the same experiences.  As Grande replied it helped her by causing her to learn to survive and be on her own. Although Mago was like her mother while growing up, Reyna Grande, still managed to grow apart from her as Grande began to continue to be more independent. At the same time, they will always be sisters and always understand each other and what they had to undergo.  They both have had to deal with low- self-esteem and feeling worth less. Abandonment issues and being abused the way they were abused I couldn’t even imagine! It is hard enough dealing with insecurities and low- self- esteem in general, now adding to that with real life hardships must be an evil nightmare.  Mago ended up getting pregnant and dropping out of school and Grande ended up becoming a well- known author and a successful college graduate.   Who is to blame Mago for going the route she chose?  Mago I am sure has done well for her self currently; just a different path from Grande.  But who is to blame?  At times, their lives were hard enough to get up every morning.  I am so blessed, and sometimes I forget how blessed I truly am each day.  Mago did the best she could and so did Grande. 

“I wanted to tell her that she was wrong.  It was me who wasn’t worth anything.  Why else would Papi treat me the way he does?  Why else would the guys at school treat me the way they do?” (Grande, 269)

It is so sad that Grande had to grow up with feeling this rejection and it continued as an adult dealing with feeling unloved.  It is really hard for me to imagine because I have been so blessed with loved ones.  Being insecure and beaten down emotionally and physically could have led to so much worse.  Grande was uncomfortable with her own boyfriend Steve.  I would be so confused between what love truly means.  I would feel so low about myself because of my father beating me, and mother abandoning me, sister getting pregnant, I would probably only run to Steve to help counter act it all.  Grande made a brave, smart decision of breaking it off with Steve and I admired that a lot.  I admire the strength in Grande and the vision she desperately held onto.  Grande was not letting go of her dream and she wanted her dad to be proud of her so badly; I still don’t understand that.  But, I do at the same time.  She loves her parents and sees through the bad, and only wants them to be proud.  I think she had made more than her parents proud, but everyone that read her novel.  Her influence upon me is not making any more excuses! Hold on to your vision! With every storm comes a rainbow.

“I thought about the vision when the blows came, because the father who beat me, the one who preferred to stay home and drink rather than to attend my band concerts or parent teacher conferences, wasn’t the same father who told me that one day I would be somebody in the country.  That much I knew” (Grande, 251).