Reflection on Reyna Grande GIP Event

Source: https://news.ucsc.edu/2018/08/reyna-grande-alumna.html

On Tuesday March 21, I was able to attend the GIP event featuring Reyna Grande, a Mexican author currently living in the United States. Reyna Grande was brought to the U.S. when she was a child. She told the audience about her experiences growing up and recovering from the trauma of being separated from her parents when she was four-and-a-half (her parents left her and her siblings alone in Mexico when she was young to find work in the U.S.), acclimating to a brand new (at times hostile) country, and struggling to find her voice and learn in a strange new environment (when she initially could not speak/understand English).

I attended both the spanish and english sections of the event. I was happy that I understood approximately 97% of everything she said during the spanish event, as it gave me hope that one day I could be fluent in spanish as well.

Hearing her describe her initial experiences in the U.S. was quite eye-opening and saddening. She described how a teacher forced her to sit "en la esquina," or corner, of the classroom when she first was brought to the United States. The teacher then effectively ignored her and made her feel stupid for not being able to speak English. I cannot imagine being ignored each day, and I imagine she must have felt an immense loneliness and hopelessness at times. But, I was inspired by the fact that she managed to persevere, both learning English and building a career for herself as a writer.

Reyna Grande also described the trauma that immigration can cause people and how toxic it can be to the mental health/development of children. She described how every day she feared ICE and wondered whether or not she would see her parents at the end of the day or whether they would be deported. That was only one of many fears she said that she had growing up. That amount of stress could not have been beneficial for a young child trying to learn and grow.

She also described the different stages she experienced as a writer and how she has grown over time (going through, as she put it, the caterpillar, pupa, emerging, and taking flight stages). Some of her messages that resonated with me is always telling your story/truth and going out of your comfort zone in order to grow as a person.