Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.93 AVERAGE
3.93 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
<spoiler >
Apá, Amá, Ira!
These abbreviations are irksome to me, just as "u" and "ur" are extremely irksome to me.
I used to hear my ex husband talk to his mother on the phone and call her amá! Now she's dead.
"Ira" Is in place of "mira," which means "look ."
This was probably a young adult book. I wish they would identify these as such on goodreads.
Every Few pages Were A different point of view, either Juana's or Adelina's. Also, the time frame Would Switch from 20 years later to 20 years before. This was kind of confusing to me, especially towards the end when juana assumed adelina's identity.
Adelina is a social worker, working in a women's shelter in Los Angeles. She's looking for her father, who disappeared from her and her mother's house so many years ago. With the help of an old, half-blind man, who at one time was her John, she finds her father's grave, at the border Of the United States with Mexico. In his skeletal hand is still held the white rosary that she gave him when he left home so Many years ago.
Her mother is dying in their village in mexico, and Adelina is leaving to bring her father's ashes to her.
Juana is eleven years old when we begin to read about her. One day her father left for work, and didn't return home. there was a hard rain Falling, and juana's mother left her in charge of her little sister Anita, both sitting on Top of a table as their hut was flooded by the overflowing river, and left to go look for her father. Juana fell asleep and Anita fell into the water and drowned. Her mother was furious with her and wouldn't speak with her, but her father said it wasn't her fault.
" 'Hush, Juana. I never want to hear you say it was your fault. Fue mi Culpa. Mi única, maldita culpa!' Apá hurled the pebbles to the ground. 'just give your Mother time, Juana. She had already suffered the loss of 2 children.Now she's lost a third.'
maría died from a scorpion sting because they didn't have enough money for a doctor and the healing woman couldn't Save her. Josefina died before leaving her mother's womb. It was as if she had given up on life, even before she was born. One day she loosened her hold and was stillborn at 4 Months.
only juana had survived. and now, juana wished that she hadn't." unquote
The family had to borrow money From don elías to bury Anita. Now her father has left for the united states to earn more money to pay off Don Elías, and to build a better house for them.
But papa doesn't return home, and about a month later, Don Elías comes to Juana's house and asks Juana's mother for the money he lent them.She doesn't have it though, and soon villagers are starting to say that apá has abandoned them. Don Elías keeps pushing Juana's mother, telling her that he can make another arrangement with her, in other words have sex with her.
At first she refuses, and goes to work for a quesadilla shack, selling quesadillas to people taking the train. But don Elías goes to the vendor and tells her not to employ Juana's mother. Now nobody will employ her, and she has no choice but to have sex With him To be able to have money for food.
The heartless villagers don't blame don Elías for this, no-o-o-o-o,. . . They blame juana's mother, and call her don elías's puta.
Now Juana's mamá is pregnant and don Elías thinks It's his baby but Juana believes it's from her father. When she has the baby, don Elias and his wife doña Matilde Kidnap the baby and name him José Alberto, though juana's mother continues to call him Miguel, after her husband. This results in Juana's mother turning to alcohol.
One day Juana comes back from selling quesadillas, and her mama has a pregnant dog in the shack, who she named Princesa. She said she found it by the River. The Dog Has Babies, and Juana is worried because they Can't even Feed themselves, so how will they feed the babies?
The next day when she comes home from work, The mama is gone, and the puppieswere all dead. 'What happened to the puppies?' asks juana.
" 'Princesa didn't come back,' amá said. 'I went looking for her, But I didn't find her. Now What kind of parent abandons her children?'
'maybe something happened to her,' juana said.
'well, When I came home all the puppies were crying and crying. They cried so much, Juana.They were starving, the poor things, and there was no food in the house.Nothing, except this can.' Amá raised the empty can and showed it to her. Juana sniffed The pungent smell of spicy vinegar. 'you should have seen how they sucked on the Jalapeños. they were so hungry.' Amá hugged her legs closer to her and Rocked back and forth. 'poor little puppies. poor little puppies. so hungry and unloved.' "
Now She's the town drunk, and won't even wash herself or her clothes anymore. Juana long ago left school, and has to try to earn money to take care of herself and her mother.
On the day of Jose Alberto's baptism, Juana's mother shows up to the church drunk, and stabs Don Elías. This wasn't clear. In the book, I actually thought she'd tried to stab the baby. It wasn't until I read this summary that I found out it was don Elías. Anyway, she is sent to prison.
Now, juana leaves to go search for her father. she travels by bus. . .
"The bus was pulled over by soldiers at the checkpoint farther up.Juana saw their flashlights waving, cutting through the darkness inside the bus as they climbed into it.
'good morning, everyone, we are from the department of immigration. we are performing a routine inspection and ask for your cooperation. please have your identification Cards ready.'
people murmured under their breath. zippers were opened, papers were shuffled. Juana heard gasps of fear.
But who was afraid of these men shining their flashlights into their eyes?
She was.
What state are you from? Where do you live? Where are you going? the soldiers asked as they made their way down the aisle.
the man sitting beside her opened his bag and pulled out his credentials and birth certificate. he turned to look at her and asked, 'don't you have Your documents?'
juana shook her head. 'I lost them on my way here. I have nothing that says Who I am. why are they doing this?' she looked behind her And saw a woman crying.
'they are looking for illegal immigrants from central america. salvadoreños, Guatemaltecos, anyone who is not mexican.' "
luckily for Juana the man who sat next to her told the soldiers that she was his daughter and that her papers had been lost in a fire. the soldiers believed him, and passed on.
Juana eventually arrives in tijuana. Her first night there, she has no money, and so she's trying to sleep in a park. She is mistaken for someone who robbed a man, and is thrown in jail, where she meets the prostitute Adelina.
The next morning when they get out of jail, Adelina brings Juana to her apartment to live with her, and tells Juana that to find out about her Father she must get close to Coyotes. Juana spends weeks going from bar to bar trying to talk to Coyotes, who will not talk to her. Adelina advises her to take up prostitution in order to get close to the coyotes. Juana does this, and finally meets the man with the one blind eye. When she asks him about her father, describing the white rosary, he gives her money without having sex with her and leaves. SHe feels that he knows something about her father.
Adelina's pimp boyfriend kills her, and Juana takes her birth certificate and uses it to go to Los Angeles. This is where we figure out the confusing switching of the stories. And I guess This story is supposed to take place quite a bit in The Past, because how hard would it be to try to use someone else's birth certificate, right?
Now Juana runs across some luck, and is directed by a street man to don Ernesto's apartment building. It's filled with rats and roaches, but don ErNesto is a kind old man who takes heart to Juana and encourages her to go to school and then college. Juana Meets A doctor named sebastian, who really loves her, but she ends up breaking up with him, because she feels like he couldn't understand her past as a sex worker, and also because it diverts her from her search for papá.
By chance Juana runs into an old man with one blind eye. He is the man that juana had for a john years ago. After describing her father and his rosary, the old man leads her to where her father is buried under a Pile of rocks. When Juana asks him how he knew where her father was, he confessed that he was the Coyote that took her father across the border. But Her father was bitten by a snake and never made it.
Don Ernesto had died and left her his money, so Juana uses this inheritance to travel with her father's ashes back To her old village in Mexico, where she finds her mother in a clinic in the Prison, delirious from her hunger strike. She also runs into her little brother, who finds out that he is Juana's brother and not the son of Don Elías. Juana takes Her Little brother to the prison to see her mamá, with the Box of her father's ashes. she mistakes Juana's brother for her husband Miguel. "Miguel you have returned to me at last." Juana's mother dies happy that night from a heart attack.
now juana and her brother are together in a happy ending, With the both of them dumping their mother's and father's ashes into the sea in Acapulco.
Apá, Amá, Ira!
These abbreviations are irksome to me, just as "u" and "ur" are extremely irksome to me.
I used to hear my ex husband talk to his mother on the phone and call her amá! Now she's dead.
"Ira" Is in place of "mira," which means "look ."
This was probably a young adult book. I wish they would identify these as such on goodreads.
Every Few pages Were A different point of view, either Juana's or Adelina's. Also, the time frame Would Switch from 20 years later to 20 years before. This was kind of confusing to me, especially towards the end when juana assumed adelina's identity.
Adelina is a social worker, working in a women's shelter in Los Angeles. She's looking for her father, who disappeared from her and her mother's house so many years ago. With the help of an old, half-blind man, who at one time was her John, she finds her father's grave, at the border Of the United States with Mexico. In his skeletal hand is still held the white rosary that she gave him when he left home so Many years ago.
Her mother is dying in their village in mexico, and Adelina is leaving to bring her father's ashes to her.
Juana is eleven years old when we begin to read about her. One day her father left for work, and didn't return home. there was a hard rain Falling, and juana's mother left her in charge of her little sister Anita, both sitting on Top of a table as their hut was flooded by the overflowing river, and left to go look for her father. Juana fell asleep and Anita fell into the water and drowned. Her mother was furious with her and wouldn't speak with her, but her father said it wasn't her fault.
" 'Hush, Juana. I never want to hear you say it was your fault. Fue mi Culpa. Mi única, maldita culpa!' Apá hurled the pebbles to the ground. 'just give your Mother time, Juana. She had already suffered the loss of 2 children.Now she's lost a third.'
maría died from a scorpion sting because they didn't have enough money for a doctor and the healing woman couldn't Save her. Josefina died before leaving her mother's womb. It was as if she had given up on life, even before she was born. One day she loosened her hold and was stillborn at 4 Months.
only juana had survived. and now, juana wished that she hadn't." unquote
The family had to borrow money From don elías to bury Anita. Now her father has left for the united states to earn more money to pay off Don Elías, and to build a better house for them.
But papa doesn't return home, and about a month later, Don Elías comes to Juana's house and asks Juana's mother for the money he lent them.She doesn't have it though, and soon villagers are starting to say that apá has abandoned them. Don Elías keeps pushing Juana's mother, telling her that he can make another arrangement with her, in other words have sex with her.
At first she refuses, and goes to work for a quesadilla shack, selling quesadillas to people taking the train. But don Elías goes to the vendor and tells her not to employ Juana's mother. Now nobody will employ her, and she has no choice but to have sex With him To be able to have money for food.
The heartless villagers don't blame don Elías for this, no-o-o-o-o,. . . They blame juana's mother, and call her don elías's puta.
Now Juana's mamá is pregnant and don Elías thinks It's his baby but Juana believes it's from her father. When she has the baby, don Elias and his wife doña Matilde Kidnap the baby and name him José Alberto, though juana's mother continues to call him Miguel, after her husband. This results in Juana's mother turning to alcohol.
One day Juana comes back from selling quesadillas, and her mama has a pregnant dog in the shack, who she named Princesa. She said she found it by the River. The Dog Has Babies, and Juana is worried because they Can't even Feed themselves, so how will they feed the babies?
The next day when she comes home from work, The mama is gone, and the puppieswere all dead. 'What happened to the puppies?' asks juana.
" 'Princesa didn't come back,' amá said. 'I went looking for her, But I didn't find her. Now What kind of parent abandons her children?'
'maybe something happened to her,' juana said.
'well, When I came home all the puppies were crying and crying. They cried so much, Juana.They were starving, the poor things, and there was no food in the house.Nothing, except this can.' Amá raised the empty can and showed it to her. Juana sniffed The pungent smell of spicy vinegar. 'you should have seen how they sucked on the Jalapeños. they were so hungry.' Amá hugged her legs closer to her and Rocked back and forth. 'poor little puppies. poor little puppies. so hungry and unloved.' "
Now She's the town drunk, and won't even wash herself or her clothes anymore. Juana long ago left school, and has to try to earn money to take care of herself and her mother.
On the day of Jose Alberto's baptism, Juana's mother shows up to the church drunk, and stabs Don Elías. This wasn't clear. In the book, I actually thought she'd tried to stab the baby. It wasn't until I read this summary that I found out it was don Elías. Anyway, she is sent to prison.
Now, juana leaves to go search for her father. she travels by bus. . .
"The bus was pulled over by soldiers at the checkpoint farther up.Juana saw their flashlights waving, cutting through the darkness inside the bus as they climbed into it.
'good morning, everyone, we are from the department of immigration. we are performing a routine inspection and ask for your cooperation. please have your identification Cards ready.'
people murmured under their breath. zippers were opened, papers were shuffled. Juana heard gasps of fear.
But who was afraid of these men shining their flashlights into their eyes?
She was.
What state are you from? Where do you live? Where are you going? the soldiers asked as they made their way down the aisle.
the man sitting beside her opened his bag and pulled out his credentials and birth certificate. he turned to look at her and asked, 'don't you have Your documents?'
juana shook her head. 'I lost them on my way here. I have nothing that says Who I am. why are they doing this?' she looked behind her And saw a woman crying.
'they are looking for illegal immigrants from central america. salvadoreños, Guatemaltecos, anyone who is not mexican.' "
luckily for Juana the man who sat next to her told the soldiers that she was his daughter and that her papers had been lost in a fire. the soldiers believed him, and passed on.
Juana eventually arrives in tijuana. Her first night there, she has no money, and so she's trying to sleep in a park. She is mistaken for someone who robbed a man, and is thrown in jail, where she meets the prostitute Adelina.
The next morning when they get out of jail, Adelina brings Juana to her apartment to live with her, and tells Juana that to find out about her Father she must get close to Coyotes. Juana spends weeks going from bar to bar trying to talk to Coyotes, who will not talk to her. Adelina advises her to take up prostitution in order to get close to the coyotes. Juana does this, and finally meets the man with the one blind eye. When she asks him about her father, describing the white rosary, he gives her money without having sex with her and leaves. SHe feels that he knows something about her father.
Adelina's pimp boyfriend kills her, and Juana takes her birth certificate and uses it to go to Los Angeles. This is where we figure out the confusing switching of the stories. And I guess This story is supposed to take place quite a bit in The Past, because how hard would it be to try to use someone else's birth certificate, right?
Now Juana runs across some luck, and is directed by a street man to don Ernesto's apartment building. It's filled with rats and roaches, but don ErNesto is a kind old man who takes heart to Juana and encourages her to go to school and then college. Juana Meets A doctor named sebastian, who really loves her, but she ends up breaking up with him, because she feels like he couldn't understand her past as a sex worker, and also because it diverts her from her search for papá.
By chance Juana runs into an old man with one blind eye. He is the man that juana had for a john years ago. After describing her father and his rosary, the old man leads her to where her father is buried under a Pile of rocks. When Juana asks him how he knew where her father was, he confessed that he was the Coyote that took her father across the border. But Her father was bitten by a snake and never made it.
Don Ernesto had died and left her his money, so Juana uses this inheritance to travel with her father's ashes back To her old village in Mexico, where she finds her mother in a clinic in the Prison, delirious from her hunger strike. She also runs into her little brother, who finds out that he is Juana's brother and not the son of Don Elías. Juana takes Her Little brother to the prison to see her mamá, with the Box of her father's ashes. she mistakes Juana's brother for her husband Miguel. "Miguel you have returned to me at last." Juana's mother dies happy that night from a heart attack.
now juana and her brother are together in a happy ending, With the both of them dumping their mother's and father's ashes into the sea in Acapulco.
This book was very good and eye-opening to the crisis of the border. I loved the story line and the ending.
medium-paced
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
There are some things I wish could be expanded on in this book, but I really enjoyed it. The story is heart wrenching (the *entire* story) and the ending had me in tears. I wish the 2nd POV was more developed in the beginning, as I could barely barely follow it (I get that was the point but 2 pages wasn’t enough info). I also think there are some cliches and heavy topics that could’ve been handled better. Overall, I great read to have a good cry.
Trigger warning!
There is a lot if dark context in this book. A lot of potentially very harmful topics that may be mentioned...this includes things of death and rape.
I was not warned of these topics for my class so I feel that I must start out by saying this warning to read at your own risk.
As for the book itself,
It's confusing in parts and the content within made it difficult for me to read or enjoy. It is not a book for the faint of heart. I respect the author for truly showing the horror some chicanas faced, it is just very hard for me to read.
It's a painful book, in more ways than one but it wasn't bad. But I would not read this again.
There is a lot if dark context in this book. A lot of potentially very harmful topics that may be mentioned...this includes things of death and rape.
I was not warned of these topics for my class so I feel that I must start out by saying this warning to read at your own risk.
As for the book itself,
It's confusing in parts and the content within made it difficult for me to read or enjoy. It is not a book for the faint of heart. I respect the author for truly showing the horror some chicanas faced, it is just very hard for me to read.
It's a painful book, in more ways than one but it wasn't bad. But I would not read this again.
Reyna Grande’s Across A Hundred Mountains offers a human story behind the thousands of immigrants who cross illegally from Mexico to the United States each year. Although the book is fiction, the author’s personal experience informs her tale. According to the biography on her website, Grande, who now lives in California, “entered the U.S. as an illegal immigrant in 1985″ to join her parents when she was ten years old. Earlier this year, the book won the annual El Premio Aztlan Literary Award, started by New Mexico writer Rudolfo Anaya to honor Chicano literature.
Across A Hundred Mountains begins with a scene of devastating loss in a Mexican village. Nine-year-old Juana, her baby sister, and mother Lupe are stuck in their flooding shack, waiting for Juana’s father Miguel to return from his work as a campesino. Lupe goes to search for him, leaving Juana standing on the kitchen table holding her sister. Juana falls asleep while she waits for her parents to return, and the baby dies in the floodwater. The death of the baby sets off a chain of events that destroys the García family. When Miguel can’t pay the debt for the baby’s funeral, he decides to head to the United States to find work, leaving Lupe vulnerable to the rapacious town mortuary director, Don Elías.
The story of Juana is intercut with scenes from the perspective of Adelina, a Mexican American woman who works as a social worker in L.A. and travels to Tijuana to find out the truth about her father’s disappearance nineteen years earlier. In the first chapter, an old coyote leads her to her father’s remains, lying where he fell after a snake bit him during his attempt to cross into the U.S. After Lupe is reduced to a raving alcoholic due to grief caused by the deaths of three of her children, Juana embarks on a journey in the opposite direction to find her father in the U.S.
Grande’s prose is spare and simple, and its clarity is often beautiful, such as in this description of Juana’s neighborhood in which she remembers walking with her father, whom she calls Apá:
“They ran down the street, Apá pulling her behind him like a kite. She knew they were almost home when the cobbled stones were replaced with dirt and pebbles. And the rows of pink, blue, yellow, purple, and green concrete houses became shacks growing out of the earth. Little shacks made out of bamboo sticks and cardboard, some leaning against one another like little old ladies tired after a long walk.”
Plot and structure rather than nuanced characterization are the primary strengths of Across A Hundred Mountains. Although Juana, Adelina, and Lupe are given complexity, the supporting characters tend to be wholly good or evil, such as the leering, corpulent Don Elías who ultimately makes Lupe pay her debt by having sex with him, and Don Elías’ silent, childless wife who “just sat there, knitting baby clothes she donated to the church.” But villains like these help to propel the plot, providing as many dramatic twists and turns as can be found in a telenovela, making the book go down easily in one sitting.
What is more striking than the influence of villains on the lives of the García family is the harsh consequences of their poverty and the indifference most of the people they encounter have toward their plight. It’s expensive to be poor, their indebtedness compounding every woe, ultimately forcing Juana to become a prostitute for a while in Tijuana until she can raise enough money to hire a coyote to lead her across the border. She and others in her position are treated as something less than human, the money-minded coyote ready to abandon them in the desert if the immigration authorities turn up or if they move too slowly. The simple description of Juana’s desert crossing attempt is riveting, and the perils make it evident that only a person who is so desperate to reach the U.S. that she would be willing to give up her life to do so ever embarks on such a journey.
With “Across A Hundred Mountains” Reyna Grande has humanized the lightning-rod topic of illegal immigration by telling the story of one embattled family.
Published in New West, August 2007.
Across A Hundred Mountains begins with a scene of devastating loss in a Mexican village. Nine-year-old Juana, her baby sister, and mother Lupe are stuck in their flooding shack, waiting for Juana’s father Miguel to return from his work as a campesino. Lupe goes to search for him, leaving Juana standing on the kitchen table holding her sister. Juana falls asleep while she waits for her parents to return, and the baby dies in the floodwater. The death of the baby sets off a chain of events that destroys the García family. When Miguel can’t pay the debt for the baby’s funeral, he decides to head to the United States to find work, leaving Lupe vulnerable to the rapacious town mortuary director, Don Elías.
The story of Juana is intercut with scenes from the perspective of Adelina, a Mexican American woman who works as a social worker in L.A. and travels to Tijuana to find out the truth about her father’s disappearance nineteen years earlier. In the first chapter, an old coyote leads her to her father’s remains, lying where he fell after a snake bit him during his attempt to cross into the U.S. After Lupe is reduced to a raving alcoholic due to grief caused by the deaths of three of her children, Juana embarks on a journey in the opposite direction to find her father in the U.S.
Grande’s prose is spare and simple, and its clarity is often beautiful, such as in this description of Juana’s neighborhood in which she remembers walking with her father, whom she calls Apá:
“They ran down the street, Apá pulling her behind him like a kite. She knew they were almost home when the cobbled stones were replaced with dirt and pebbles. And the rows of pink, blue, yellow, purple, and green concrete houses became shacks growing out of the earth. Little shacks made out of bamboo sticks and cardboard, some leaning against one another like little old ladies tired after a long walk.”
Plot and structure rather than nuanced characterization are the primary strengths of Across A Hundred Mountains. Although Juana, Adelina, and Lupe are given complexity, the supporting characters tend to be wholly good or evil, such as the leering, corpulent Don Elías who ultimately makes Lupe pay her debt by having sex with him, and Don Elías’ silent, childless wife who “just sat there, knitting baby clothes she donated to the church.” But villains like these help to propel the plot, providing as many dramatic twists and turns as can be found in a telenovela, making the book go down easily in one sitting.
What is more striking than the influence of villains on the lives of the García family is the harsh consequences of their poverty and the indifference most of the people they encounter have toward their plight. It’s expensive to be poor, their indebtedness compounding every woe, ultimately forcing Juana to become a prostitute for a while in Tijuana until she can raise enough money to hire a coyote to lead her across the border. She and others in her position are treated as something less than human, the money-minded coyote ready to abandon them in the desert if the immigration authorities turn up or if they move too slowly. The simple description of Juana’s desert crossing attempt is riveting, and the perils make it evident that only a person who is so desperate to reach the U.S. that she would be willing to give up her life to do so ever embarks on such a journey.
With “Across A Hundred Mountains” Reyna Grande has humanized the lightning-rod topic of illegal immigration by telling the story of one embattled family.
Published in New West, August 2007.