Migrant Heart: Essays About Things I Can’t Forget

Mexican American novelist and memoirist Grande (Across a Hundred Mountains) explores the ripple effects of her experiences as an immigrant in this stirring collection. The subject matter is broad: “Stitching My Mother Tongue” probes Grande’s feelings of shame at not being able to write in Spanish, and for raising her children in an English-speaking home; “Explaining Myself” details her decision, in the wake of the #MeToo movement and Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings, to publicly discuss being raped by a friend. Other essays are darkly humorous, as when Grande recalls attending her sister-in-law’s 2004 college graduation, where the commencement speaker, Donald Trump, told the audience that “if there is a concrete wall in front of you, go through it, go over it, go around. But get to the other side of that wall.” Grande ends the volume with an account of her daughter tending to a deformed monarch butterfly, explaining how the species “has become a symbol for undocumented immigrants” because of its 3,000-mile migration through “storms, predators, and a vanishing food supply.” Nimbly balancing hope and heartbreak, Grande’s tender dispatches add up to an affecting self-portrait. Photos. Agent: Johanna Castillo, Writers House. (May)