Reyna Grande Rodriguez

Reyna, the subject and author of this memoir, is four years old when the book opens. She grows up in poverty in Mexico in the village of Iguala, in the poorest state in Mexico, Guerrero. Her father leaves for America when she is just two years old and she waits patiently for her mother to return after she joins him. Her older sister, Mago, shows her the little shack in which she was born, where her umbilical cord is buried, and she goes there to feel connected to her absent mother. She longingly looks at the photograph she has of her father, waiting for him to return and be their hero, and wishes for her mother to come back to them. During their absence, she is sent with her siblings to live with their cruel paternal grandmother, Abuela Evila, where they are dressed in rags...