Although Reyna's story is often bitter and cruel, the book is not a portrait of how suffering ruined her life forever. She writes from the position described by the epilogue; she is only the girl in the book—she is the author of the book. Her emergence from pain, shame, and mistreatment made her account of life beautiful, and as an artist, she explains that she has been rather successful. She "made it," one might say. In fact, she reports that her friends and colleagues are some of her literary heroes.
That is to say, the Distance Between Us is at least partly the distance between Reyna, the author, and Reyna of the past. By willingly exposing the years of confusion, abandonment, and hopelessness that defined her childhood, Reyna can give hope to readers who might also wonder whether life is worth living when life is full of confusion and sorrow. Reyna explains that by enduring and putting one foot in front of the other, she has been able to experience a full-blown hero's myth.
Grande mythologizes her past by analyzing memories and by writing them down and presenting them as prose and art. Their value as art is that her suffering is identifiable to many people. In fact, there is a systematic sorrow relating to migrant work and abandonment that this memoir speaks directly to. For this, the book can be said to be hopeful, because the reader should be able to see that suffering and mistreatment may have damaged her emotionally early on, but that did not stop her from becoming a powerful artist. This might be helpful news to a suffering reader.
