Chicana writer Dorotea Reyna’s memoir takes readers back to a more peaceful time on the U.S.-Mexico 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 unforgettable men and women who helped shape her as a child. As she celebrates the values of the community in her humble pueblo, she calls to question today’s rampant militarization of the border.

Los Cedros: A Tejana Memoir

is accompanied by a Study Guide designed to generate discussions in classrooms or book clubs.

Dorotea Reyna: Author Biography

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.

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Endorsements

Dorotea Reyna’s excellent book, Los Cedros: A Tejana Memoir, takes us back to the 1960s to a small border town on the banks of the Rio Grande. Incorporating elements of fiction, this unique memoir renders vivid descriptions of a series of memorable Mexican-American residents including a priest who joins the local farmworkers’ quest for justice, a poet whose works are known far beyond the region, and a young girl just beginning to navigate a larger world beyond the confines of her extended family.

‍Velma García
Professor of Government
Smith College

In a beautifully poetic and gently provocative memoir, Dorotea Reyna invites readers of all ages to experience the world of her childhood pueblito through loving portraits of several of its residents. Reyna juxtaposes the most tender images of her family’s past with the untenable harshness of the border in the present.

‍Hilary Landorf, Ph.D.
‍Assistant Vice President, Global Learning Initiatives
Associate Professor,
International &
Intercultural Education
Florida International University

Dorotea Reyna’s Los Cedros: A Tejana Memoir is warm, raw, and real—it’s a love letter to the author's pueblo and those who created the structure and magic within it. Reyna’s accompanying Study Guide will help younger students to historically situate the text as well as to reflect on how the issues raised in Los Cedros personally affect them and their worldview.

‍Jody A. Marín, Ph.D.
‍Associate Professor of English
Coordinator of Freshman and Sophomore English
Department of Language and Literature
Texas A&M University-Kingsville