Please join us for a book signing and reading by Dorotea Reyna, author of the newly released book Los Cedros: A Tejana Memoir. 

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 discovers that her father's village is now being monitored by a surveillance balloon, and her mother's village is now framed by the Wall. Alarmed by these changes, she writes this memoir which takes her readers back to a far more peaceful time on the border when she was a girl growing up the 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 including her pueblo's activist priest, the kindly woman who took care of 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 "English only" classroom.

Writing in vivid poetic language, with stories that express both wonder and despair, she attempts to recover the wholeness she felt as a child from the violence and demagoguery of today's political discourse. 

Dorotea Reyna was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, and earned degrees in English from Stanford University and the University of Texas at Austin. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in several anthologies of Chicano literature, most recently in Chicana/Latina Studies, the journal of Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social. Professionally, she worked as a fundraiser for several Bay Area universities focusing on raising scholarships for Latinos and other students of color.