While I started to read Reyna Grande’s “The Distance Between Us” it took me a little while to figure out why Elmaz asked us to focus on world building and how it was done outside the angle. One cannot write outside the angle, the angle is everything. And then like a bolt of lightning it hit me on page 64. Grande uses this technique several times, but this is where it became evident to me that she is playing with time to build her world, tell her story, and paint the whole picture outside the angle. Grande uses the guidance of an older self, the “ghost narrator” to insert the introspective of the important moments that Grande was able to look back on and realize were cornerstones for her life.   

            On page 64 while Reyna is being taking to the hospital for the scorpion bite she asks Tia Emperatriz if her parents will come back, and she responds by saying, “’From what I’ve heard, El Orto Lado is a very beautiful place. But here…’” Reyan goes on and activates the ghost narrator “She waved he hand for me to look outside the cab window. I know now she had wanted me to see back then: the banks of the canal lined with trash debris floating in the water, the crumbling adobe house, the shacks made of sticks, the children with worm-pregnant bellies running around with bare feet, the piles of drying horse dung littering the dirt road, the flea-bitten stray dogs lying under the shade of trees, flies hovering above them. but what I saw back then I saw through the eyes of a child—a child who had never been anywhere, a child who was still innocent enough to see past the things later in life she could not. What I saw were the velvety mountains around us, the clear blue sky, the beautiful jacaranda trees covered in purple flowers, bougainvilleas crawling up fences, their dried magenta petals whirling in the wind. I saw the cobble stone street leading up to the beautiful La Guadalupe church, papel picado of all color waving above the street.”

            This is such an important part because Grande is not just building one world but two. If she would have simply described what she saw as a child and stayed in the angle the story wouldn’t have been whole. If she would have simply let the ghost narrator describe what was out the window we would have missed the child perspective. By combining both of them and showing their contrast the world that Grande has created is layered and full. A place is different depending on who you are when you see it. To highlight both is to make that place whole and real. It is important because it puts us in Tia Emperatriz view point at that time with out leaving Reyan. Its just brilliant. And it was done by a simple and subtle cue to let us know we are moving from the angle, “I know now she had wanted me to see back then”

            Grande does this again and again, and I say she is playing with time because she constantly interrupts, rather informs, the events that are happing by interjecting the knowledge she learned about the situation later at the time the child character is experiencing the situation. Like how her mother decided to leave them the second time for the wrestler. It gives context, it gives texture, and it shows the whole picture. The reason it works is because she is consistent with it and doesn’t stay too long before we are back with the child exercising the events.   

Best,

CF