Revealing the masque of immigration
‘Across a hundred mountains’ is a novel written by Reyna Grande and first published in 2006. The novel attracted readers upon its publication and turned into one of the acknowledged masterpieces in the field of novels appealing to mainly female readers and exploring aspects of crucial importance to humans such as love, betrayal, immigration, abandonment, and exploitation of humans, hope and discouragement, friendship. It is to wonder how all these aspects can be approached by a number of pages of a story but ‘Across a Hundred Mountains’ approaches all these issues concerning human existence in such a way that takes its readers a step further to reflect upon these aspects of life. The thematic core of the novel is the adventure of two women, Juana and Adelina. Juanna is Mexican and needs to immigrate illegally to the United States in an effort to find her father and Adelina standing on the other side of the river is a woman who coming from America followed her boyfriend in an effort to make her life better. A friendship is developed between these two women who meet in a jail in a Mexican city and their efforts to make their dreams come true is unfolding throughout the plot of the novel. The aim of this paper is to present you with one of the issues as developed throughout this plot, the issue of immigration. The paper will present you with the way immigration seems to have affected both women under a different aspect since their origins and destinations are different, the nature of immigration as a phenomenon entering people’s lives and it will focus on what the human side of immigration.
Immigration is a phenomenon of political and economic nature. At least these are the two main aspects which are seen at first look in the phenomenon of immigration. Nevertheless immigration is foremost a humanized phenomenon since it has got to do with people. Immigration holds its own historical background and it could be described in brief as the moving of people between countries while they are trying to make a better living. Of course it is easily recognizable that immigration falls into the hands of governments and policies organized by numerous factors since there have been and there still are movements of people moving to other countries initialized by governmental policies aiming at the exploitation of sources and wealth existing in specific countries. The novel ‘Across a Hundred Mountains’ approaches the phenomenon of immigration through the personal stories of two women. So immigration and the route drawn by each one of these female individuals as depicted in this novel is seen personally revealing to the readers the human nature of immigrants and all the complexities entailed in their personal journeys.
The title of the novel prepares its readers that what they are about to read is a kind of adventure. It is an adventure performed and experienced over a ‘hundred mountains’ which is a phrase depicting the difficulties and the problems entailed in such a crossing. The writer builds a plot around Juana. She is an eleven years old girl living at the outskirts of a poor village in Mexico with her mother and father and little baby brother. They live in a shack which is flooded upon a night when the physical disaster hits their place. This is the beginning point of the plot. Juanna does not manage to hold tight the baby while standing on the table according to the advice of her mother so the baby is drown. Then Anita, her mother who has gone out on that night to look for her husband, she comes face to face with her husband’s disappearance. Two disasters one physical and one personal hit their family and the two women have to deal with that. There is a debt to Don Elias the powerful figure of their village who pays for the funeral. The readers realize that the debt which falls upon the family of Juanna is double. There is the money they owe to Don Elias and there is the ethical debt which Juanna feels subconsciously at the beginning and consciously as she grows up as far as her share of responsibility is concerned regarding the death of her baby brother. The baby fell off her hands because she had fallen asleep while she was holding it. This double debt is a kind of a double edged knife since the only way to be paid off is the sacrifice of the soul of both women. The mother sacrifices herself since the only payment Don Elias accepts is her body and the daughter sacrifices her childhood and her innocence since she decides to go after a hunt in order to be able and find her father. Juanna’s goal the time she begins her journey is double as well. She wishes to find her father so that her family manages to get rid of the characterization of being regarded by the other villagers as an abandoned family whereas and at the same time she wishes to find a job in America in order to earn the money they are supposed to pay to Don Elias so that the exploitation of her mother stops.
Juanna meets Adelina and the two stories of the two girls start unfolding. It is noticeable that the novel is not told in chapters but in scenes taken from the personal stories of the two girls. It is an immigration story in which all the right and wrong actions on behalf of the girls who immigrate are unfolded. It is a portrait of the immigration of their souls. Like birds they fly towards their destination. Juanna seems to be orientated towards her goal whereas Adelina seems to be flying forward and backwards, not seeming always sure about what she is doing or why she is doing it.
Could it be that Reyna Grande wishes to reveal the ambiguity consisting the nature of immigrants? Do immigrants really feel always certain about their decisions and actions? Are they happy when they settle down to their destination feeling that they have eventually managed to escape the terror and poverty of their native country? Are they content and certain that they finally have their own chance to get to the moon, to have a way to go after their own personal dream of success? All these are the questions which cross the readers’ minds while reading this novel reading the nature of immigration and its effect on people and the interpersonal relationship developed between immigrants and their native country.
The native country in this novel is Mexico for Juanna and America for Adelina. These two lines of immigration meet somewhere in the middle and they have to go on their route leaving the other towards the opposite direction. But once crossed these two lines never stop mingling. Their routes are like an invisible maze which brings these two girls in front of each other in a metaphorical way. What happens to Juanna is seen under the thought of the corresponding event happening to Adelina.
It is easily perceived throughout the reading of the novel that these two immigration cases are the portrait of two souls immigrating to their dream. And it is then realized that these two dreams although different in reality and traits are not so apart from one other after all. Both souls of both girls wish to find peace, quiet, happiness, inner fulfillment. The way they look for these ‘things’ which can by no means considered material is different. And this differentiation is what makes this novel even greater in the way it depicts immigration. The difference of the girls and their souls while looking for their fulfillment actually reveals the ambiguity of one person’s soul. Even one person’s soul can have and most probably has two faces. The face of the certainty and devotion to its goal and the face of second thoughts, of fears, of agonies and unsolved complexes. This is the real revealing of immigration performed in this novel.
There is a specific scene on page 25 of the novel which describes the scene of Adelina’s arrival in Los Angeles. She is in the park and she meets the man who is supposed to take her to Don Ernesto. So the man turns to Adelina and tells her while pointing to the moon up in the sky ‘It has two faces. She only shows one face to the world. Even though it changes shape constantly, it’s always the same face we see. But her second face, her second face remains hidden in darkness. That’s the face no one can see. People call it the dark side of the moon. Two identities. Two sides of a coin’. (Reyna Grande, ‘Across a Hundred Mountains’, pg 25)
These words are expressed by the writer Reyna Grande as a prediction on what the readers are about to witness. There is always a coin holding two sides in life as far as all abstract ideas and concepts involved in humans’ lives are concerned. There is death and there is life. There is happiness and there is grief and sadness, there is smile and there is tear. All abstract ideas exist in nature as pairs. And immigration is seen under this aspect in this novel.
Immigration is the way to happiness or at least it is the way to keeping hope that everything is possible. But at the same time immigration is grief and sadness over the native country the immigrants leave behind. Immigration is also difficulties and problems and prejudice as experienced on behalf of the immigrants in the country they finally decide to settle down. Immigration is the chance of immigrants to earn their living, to enter another civilization and culture and broaden their horizons. But at the same time immigration is the danger of one losing his / her national identity in an effort to adjust to the reality of the country in which he / she has decided to live. Immigration is definitely not a one sided coin. It involves ambition, hope, optimism, survival. But on the other side it equally involves pain, loss, prejudice, offences, and dangers of being exploited.
It seems that Reyna Grande wishes to highlight this double nature of immigration. As Hing (2006) mentions ‘immigration involves the mixture of multi-cultural values and morals therefore respect towards the socio –cultural background of the immigrants is a prerequisite for their normal settlement’. (Hing Onq Bill, Deporting Our Souls: Values, Morality and Immigration Policy, 1st ed. pg 28).Regardless of the ending of the novel which is not to be presented in this paper, there is one thing which is certain. Immigrants are people who have boarded their boat or ship towards their destination but they have always left one of their feet standing on the land of their home town. So their journey, their voyage in life is like balancing on a swinging rope above their hands trying to keep their identity, to achieve their goals and to interact without traumas. Zolberg (2006) in his ‘A Nation by Design’ looks into a significant aspect of immigration since he says as far as America is concerned that ‘immigration has been the tool for national design’. (Zolberg, A Nation by Design, preface). It seems that Reyna Grande looks into this aspect of immigration in an underlying way since she depicts the need for her heroines to design their lives while without having probably realized it they contribute to the national design of the countries to which they immigrate.
The bottom line though of Reyna’s novel is the double sided effect of migration upon people who experience it as immigrants or upon those who accept is as citizens of the country to which immigrants go and settle down. Legrain (2007) mentions ‘Or, to put it another way, if you believe that the world is an unequal place and that the rich should do more to help the poor, then freer international migration should be the next front in the battle for global economic justice’.(Legrain, Immigrants: Your Country needs them, pg 11). Reyna Grande’s novel certainly raises lots of questions concerning the equality and justice as experienced by her heroines. The cases presented in the article by Kirk Semple (2012) are people who have immigrated to the United States and have managed to make their dreams come true. One of the three men presented there says ‘ “The success of my life is not only that I make a lot of money,” he said, “but that I make a lot of Korean people’s lives better.” ’ (Kirk Semple, Moving to US and Amassing a Fortune, No English needed’). Taking such a witness into account one could even argue that Reyna Grande depicts her heroines’ lives in such a way that she reveals this aspect of immigrants as well. Juanna represents this case of an immigrant who wishes through her migration to make the lives of her villagers better. Juanna does not appear to act solely motivated by her personal interest but mainly due to the inner feeling of her high responsibility to act in such a way that her family who has stayed behind will be able to improve her quality of life thus contributing to the improvement of the existing situation in all the village.
Pirandello once said that humans are both actors and directors in the theatrical performances of their lives. What that means is that people always wear masques and adopt behaviors according to what others expect of them to do. But these masques no matter their usefulness are always dangerous since there is always the underlying danger for the people who wear specific masques to forget who they are or what their real traits are. Playing according to the social rules is in a way mandatory so that people can be easily adjusted to the social norm of their societies. But this adjust on their behalf ought to be performed in such a way that they do not forget who they are, where they come from and most important where they are heading to. Life is a journey during which people meet lots of challenges, play different roles and adopt numerous behaviors and attitudes. All these ought to happen in such a way that their original personality traits are not forgotten and are kept if they prove to be indeed representative of their personality’s nature and soul. Juanna and Adelina represent all these cases of people who trying to direct their own lives fall in the trap of forgetting their origins or compromising to being treated in an inhuman way.
Works cited
Grande Reyna, Across a Hundred Mountains, Washington Square Press 2007 (2006)
Hing Onq Bill, Deporting Our Souls: Values, Morality and Immigration Policy, 1st ed. Cambridge University Press 2006
Legrain, Philippe, Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them, 1st ed. Little Brown 2007
Lunsford Andrea, Ruszkiewicz John, Walters Keith, Everything’s an Argument, 6th ed. Bedford ST Martin’s 2012, pg 648 ‘Moving to US and Amassing a Fortune, No English needed’, Kirk Semple
Zolberg, Aristide, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America 1st ed. Harvard University Press 2006
