Abandonment
For Reyna, this memoir is certainly an artifact of serious pain. The emotional pain of her abandonment stays a subject matter through the whole memoir. She struggles to pinpoint whether she and her siblings were indeed abandoned, or if her parents' stories about going to America to get better jobs is really true. She knows they are doing that, but the question is whether they could have taken her with them. Instead she stays with a grumpy, abusive grandmother who mistreats the children. Abandonment means that Reyna and her siblings have to raise themselves, often against all odds.
Abuse
The theme of abuse is hinted at in Reyna's abuela's house. But there, it was serious disrespect and neglect that constituted their abuse. When Papi helps them cross the border as older children, then they see full-blown domination and emotional abuse. He has wild mood swings such that they never know when they are safe, and when he reacts, he overreacts in unpredictable ways. He often punishes the children as creatively as possible, humiliating them and pitting them against one another.
Becoming one's self
Although the odds were stacked against Reyna, she ends up becoming herself in the course of the memoir. We start as the reader by seeing a child suffering without anyone to love or console her except her own siblings who are also suffering. Through time, that negative experience of life becomes more and more unbearable until finally in high school, Reyna has an epiphanic conversation with her sister where they finally admit that their family is broken and abusive. Reyna heals and goes to college to grow as a person, and before long, she is the memoirist who writes Distance.
