The property
The beginning of this memoir has thoroughly Mexican imagery. The family lives on their property in Mexico, but they are destitute with poverty. Their experience of Mexico is one of struggle and pain. They are constantly frustrated by their difficulties, and when finally the mother goes north to try and earn some money by working in America, the question of course is whether she will come back or whether she has doomed her own children to stay in the imagery and setting that she herself could not handle.
America as the unknown
The imagery of America is like a full blown experience of emotional speculation and imagination. America is not a wonderland, the children already know, but what would it be like to be there where perhaps they could be out from under the authority of their grandma? They wonder about America even more when their mother leaves. America is the imagery of the unknown, because whenever her parents come home from El Otro Lado, they have stories that are wildly different than what Reyna expected. When they leave, there is no telling what they do or what their lives are really like.
Los Angeles and the father
Finally, Reyna and her siblings get a chance to see what America is like. They sneak past border patrol and enter California on their third try. Their father takes them to his apartment in Los Angeles and the children get enrolled in the high school there. Suddenly, the concrete imagery of Los Angeles takes on an abstract quality that they did not expect. Because their father is emotionally unstable, he is often unpredictable and sometimes abusive. This means that they suffer opportunity, change, and some horror, all together at the same time. Los Angeles is a fitting imagery for such an emotional experience, because it is simultaneously beautiful and occasionally rather intimidating.
Education and growth
The school experience that Reyna has is validating. Her real life sufferings were not for nothing, she sees. She has analytical skills and problem solving skills that make her a strong student in school, and when she gets to go to college, that is a major turning point in her conscious experience of self. School is the imagery within which Reyna explores her potential and heals from the damage of the past. By learning to write powerfully, she transforms her pain into artwork and grows into a new identity.
