![]() She began to make her dream of a middle-class life a reality, but at the expense of her writing. Instead, she floundered, unsure of how to begin her writing career. After graduation, she returned to LA idealistic, believing that a degree would automatically grant her success. When, for example, the mother who had abandoned her sent Grande’s sister back to Mexico for “running wild,” Grande brought the young girl to Santa Cruz only to be profoundly disappointed by her sister's bad behavior. But the ghosts of her past continued to haunt her. ![]() ![]() At first, the author felt out of place on the nearly all-white UCSC campus gradually, she found a place among other Hispanic students and in the university’s creative writing program. ![]() By the time Grande left community college for UCSC, her main sources of emotional support were a professor and a boyfriend who had been accepted to another college. Two older siblings had dropped out of college, broken her alcoholic father’s heart, and made him “ up on me.” He had also exiled them from his life to facilitate the return of the second wife he had divorced. When Grande ( The Distance Between Us, 2012, etc.), a former undocumented Mexican immigrant, left Los Angeles in 1996 for the University of California, Santa Cruz, she was both excited and afraid. ![]() An award-winning author’s account of how she became the first person in her family to attend college and live the dream of becoming a writer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |