The Brief

Reyna Grande was 9 years old when she came to this country from the mountainous Mexican state of Guerrero in 1985.

She came from Iguala, a town that would become infamous in 2014 after 43 teachers’ college students were taken by armed men and never seen again.

Grande’s parents emigrated before her, hoping to give their children a life without the poverty they’d endured.

“We were afraid that our parents would forget about us, that they would not come back,” she told LAist. “It was a childhood full of fears.”

Today, Grande is an established author who’s published several award-winning books, including novels and memoirs. She has also co-edited a collection of poetry, prose, and artwork about what it’s like to live as an undocumented person in the United States.

Soon, she’ll publish an essay collection, tentatively titled Writing Home, about immigration, motherhood, and the craft of writing.

But none of this came easy. In fact, it wasn’t even part of her plans, which would be upended in ways big and small, until she enrolled at Pasadena City College.

English, books, and band

Grande and her siblings didn’t see their father for eight years. When he first moved away, he worked in California’s Central Valley, harvesting crops and sleeping in an abandoned car to save as much as possible. His goal was to build his family a home.

With the help of a coyote, Grande and her siblings joined their father in the United States. They settled with him and their new stepmother in Highland Park, before the neighborhood gentrified.

Grande became a fifth grade ESL student at Aldama Elementary School, an experience that clawed at her sense of worth.

Her classmates looked like her and had Spanish surnames. But they spoke English fluently, “and sometimes they were the ones making fun of me and my siblings, making fun of our ‘wetback’ accent,” she said.

Grande learned to play the alto sax at Luther Burbank Junior High School, where she also read voraciously and won a short-story contest. At Franklin High School, she joined the marching band and proudly donned a navy blue and gold uniform at parades, football games, and pep rallies. Her father, who was forced to quit school when he was 9, demanded academic excellence. Grande kept good grades. And when she was admitted to UC Irvine, she celebrated with her family.

But there were a lot of conflicts at home. Both of her older siblings had started college and quit, and her sister had just left the house without their father’s consent. Ultimately, he didn’t let Grande go to UCI.

Grande was still underage when she graduated from high school. All she knew was that she wanted to keep studying.

Reveling in campus life

Grande enrolled at Pasadena City College. And for the next two and a half years, she fully immersed herself on campus.

She prioritized her general education courses, but also made room in her schedule for drawing and painting. She worked as a tutor, wrote for the school paper, signed up for swimming lessons, played the alto sax in the marching band, and represented her college at the annual Pasadena Rose Parade.

Grande also loved to write. For her, it was a kind of therapy, a tool that helped her sift through what was going on at home. Her father drank heavily and was often abusive. He beat her and her stepmother.

Grande kept a journal and filled hundreds and hundreds of blank pages. Still, she didn’t envision a career in writing.

“I never thought, ‘Oh, I'm gonna grow up to be a professional writer,’” she said. “Part of that was because, all through my experience in school, I hadn't been exposed to any authors who look like me.”

That changed in the summer of 1994. Grande enrolled in Dr. Diana Savas’ English class, and she introduced her to a host of Latina and Latin American authors: Helena María Viramontes. Sandra Cisneros. Isabel Allende. Julia Alvarez. Laura Esquivel.

She would often tell Grande a variation of this refrain: “If Alvarez, Cisneros, and Viramontes can publish their stories, so can you.”

“Little by little, she convinced me that I had the talent, that I had stories that mattered,” said Grande. “Thanks to her, my relationship to writing changed.”

Savas was surprised that, in a city like L.A., “which was predominantly Latino and Mexican,” Grande “had never read a book by a Latina or Latino author.”

“That just absolutely boggled my mind,” she told LAist.

“I just wanted her to know about them,” Savas added. “Part of that was that they were Latino, Latina writers. But they were also just wonderful writers.”

A new home

Savas also supported Grande through an especially challenging moment. One evening, her father beat her stepmother so severely that she had to go to the hospital. Then, the police came to their home.

“They arrested him right in front of me,” said Grande. “I watched the cops take him away. And then, the next day, I still had to go to class, turn in my homework, pay attention.”

She moved in with her estranged mother and slept on the floor of her tiny apartment. Grande used public transportation to get around, and it now took her three hours to get home from Pasadena. She had a class that ended at 7 p.m. One night, a group of men followed her home. Grande ran all the way to the apartment. When she told her mother about what happened, she suggested dropping the class.

“I felt so helpless and hopeless,” said Grande. “I needed to talk to someone.”

She went to Savas’ office hours, hoping for some advice. Savas listened carefully. Then, she offered her a room in her home.

Savas lived across the street from campus. And aside from being convenient, the professor’s home made Grande feel safe. At her father’s house, she’d grown accustomed to being holed up in her bedroom, lest she run across him in a moment of ire. In The Distance Between Us, one of Grande’s memoirs, she describes how different it was to live with Savas:

“I'm really grateful,” said Grande. “She didn't have to do that.”

Savas doesn’t think she did anything remarkable. She offered Grande a place to stay, she told LAist, out of “basic human decency.”

When it came time for Grande to transfer to a four-year university, Savas also provided support. Together, they researched schools with strong creative writing programs. Savas also proofread her personal statements and encouraged her to apply for scholarships.

Today, nearly 30 years later, Savas thinks Grande gives her “too much credit.”

She confirmed that she helped Grande with the transfer process, but she underscored that Grande was “very industrious.”

“She was always finding scholarships here and there and everywhere,” Savas told LAist.

When the acceptance letters arrived, Grande had to choose between UCLA or UC Santa Cruz. Savas encouraged her to explore someplace new.

Grande took her advice and moved up north. She fell in love with the redwood forest, made new friends, and gained independence. Soon after, she became the first in her family to earn a college degree. When she graduated with honors from UC Santa Cruz, her father, mother, siblings, and extended family were in the audience.

Savas was there too.

“I think we all need somebody to tell us ‘Yes,’” she said. “Most of us hear: ‘No, that's impossible. No, don't do that. No, that's the wrong career.’ I think that's the message most students get ... My role was to say: ‘Yes, you can do this, you should do this.’”

Author Reyna Grande with her former English professor, Diana Savas, at a scholarship dinner in 1996.

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Courtesy of Reyna Grande

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Grande credits her community college experience with transforming the trajectory of her life.

“I have so much love for [Pasadena City College],” she said. “It was there that I started to take the steps I needed to become the person I am now.”

She’s returned to the campus repeatedly, including in 2008 to deliver a commencement speech, and in 2012 as the college’s first writer-in-residence.

Grande has also lectured at other colleges and universities and will soon be a visiting faculty member at Randolph College in Virginia. These experiences have given her a chance to see how higher ed institutions across the country are working to help meet students’ basic needs.

“I believe there is more awareness now than when I was a student, of how students may be suffering from housing or food insecurity,” she told LAist via email. “I know some colleges even run a food pantry where students can come and grab what they need. But community colleges could provide more support in terms of emergency housing. When I visit colleges, sometimes I hear stories of students living in their cars, for example, because they have nowhere else to go."

She added that more counseling would help students with their mental health: "All these things would help students have a better chance of succeeding.”

'Maybe I’m not really a writer'

Grande completed her first novel, Across a Hundred Mountains, in the early 2000s. At the time, she was back in Los Angeles, working as a teacher at Edison Middle School. She was also a single mother with a little boy. At night, she’d stay up late writing, hunched over her kitchen table.

“I don't even know how I managed to find the energy to work on that novel,” she said. “But I had this desperation of making sure that my dream didn't die.”

When the book was published in 2006, a friend called her to say he saw it at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena.

Grande got in her car and drove over to see it. She found her book on display and snapped a photo. Part of her couldn’t believe her eyes.

Writing a second novel was even harder, she said.

“I kept thinking, ‘What's my agent gonna think about this book? What’s my editor gonna think about this book? What are the readers gonna think about it? What are the book critics gonna say?’ I had all these voices in my head.”

“Maybe I’m not really a writer,” she thought. “Maybe I just got lucky. Maybe the first book was a fluke.”

Today, she knows it wasn’t.