Los Cedros: A Tejana Memoir by Dorotea Reyna
Chicana writer Dorotea Reyna returns to visit her beloved childhood home in South Texas situated on the Rio Grande River on the U.S.-Mexico border. To her astonishment, she finds her father’s village is now being monitored by a giant surveillance balloon and her mother’s village framed by the Wall. Alarmed by these changes, she writes this memoir which takes her readers back to a more peaceful time on the border when she was a girl growing up in the 60s.
In colorful vignettes which blend both facts and fiction, she recreates the spirit of the men and women who helped shape her including her pueblo’s activist priest, the kindly woman who watched over her when her parents were teaching, and the village curandera. She also shares lessons she learned from her parents and abuelos regarding race and gender, as well as recounts her journey from a primarily Spanish-speaking world to an integrated “English only” classroom.
Writing in vivid poetic language, with stories that express both wonder and despair, the poet attempts to recover the wholeness she felt as a child from the violence and demagoguery of today’s political discourse.
Cover Art by Anel Flores
Dorotea Reyna was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, and earned a Bachelor’s degree in English from Stanford University and a Master’s degree in English from the University of Texas at Austin. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in several anthologies of Chicano literature including New Chicana/Chicano Writing (University of Arizona Press, 1992), Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art (University of Texas Press, 2016), and Chicana/Latina Studies (Journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, 2021).
Professionally, she began her career as an English Instructor at Texas A&I University (now Texas A&M University-Kingsville) and went on to serve as a fundraiser for the Hispanic Scholarship Fund and for several universities in the San Francisco Bay Area. A primary focus of her career has been on expanding access to higher education by raising scholarship funds for students with financial need, especially Latinos and other students of color.