Hello, people of the internet. Though, I doubt many of you came to this blog on purpose. And I seriously doubt any of you will stay. But, if you are even slightly curious of what this blog is, I'm here to tell you.
I'm Bailey. No, I'm not going to give my last name. Although, you can probably find me either way, so whatever. I'm a new tenth grader, and this summer I was tasked with reading The Distance Between Us, by Reyna Grande. It's a memoir about her life from when she was four, and so on. I wasn't really interested in it at first, because I tend to not drift towards non-fiction, or history, or auto-biographical-type books. But when I started to read it, I was almost completely snatched into the story. Many other people would say this book is depressing, and horrible, which frankly I can't disagree with. But, that's what made me like it.
This book is about a small girl in a small town in Mexico. Her father is in El Otro Lado, or The Other Side (also known as America). She lives with her brother and sister and mother, and everything is sorta okay. She dreams of meeting her father, but doesn't know when he'll come for her and her family. One day, her mother is informed that she must go out to America with him to help him, leaving her children abandoned with a terrible grandparent.
The entire story almost revolves around abandonment. I can't count how many times the children are abandoned, or how many times their parents fail to be good to them. But it's not just about being abandoned. It's also, as I've come to realize, to show that everyone has different sides to them. In different parts of the story, I would start to favor characters, but in the next chapter, they turn horrible. Everyone in the story has their good moments, and their absolute terrible moments. The only character that stayed almost okay throughout the story was Reyna, but even she had bad moments.
This book showed me that change is a huge part of the book, and about life, and can turn a family on it's head, making loving mothers cruel and distant fathers not very distant. I loved reading this book, and I recommend it to all, if you don't have any problems with extreme sadness. (Don't worry, it has a somewhat happy ending.)
But this blog wasn't made for a book review. Along with having to read The Distance Between Us, we had to make a blog, and find five artifacts that make us think of the book. Anything really could be an artifact. A newspaper article, a podcast, clothes, a map, anything that makes you think about immigration and the book. Once we find one, we post about it on here, with a reflection. I'll be talking about how it reminds me of immigration/the book, and how it affects my opinions on that matter, and how that artifact helped me understand the book a little more.
So, if you'd like, you can stick around to read about what I find. If not, have fun on the internet!
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