Title: Make Your Home Among Strangers Author: Jennine Capó Crucet
Published: August 4, 2015
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 388
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:When Lizet—the daughter of Cuban immigrants and the first in her family to graduate from high school—secretly applies and is accepted to an ultra-elite college, her parents are furious at her decision to leave Miami. Just weeks before she's set to start school, her parents divorce and her father sells her childhood home, leaving Lizet, her mother, and Leidy—Lizet's older sister, a brand-new single mom—without a steady income and scrambling for a place to live.
Amidst this turmoil, Lizet begins her first semester at Rawlings College, distracted by both the exciting and difficult moments of freshman year. But the privileged world of the campus feels utterly foreign, as does her new awareness of herself as a minority. Struggling both socially and academically, she returns to Miami for a surprise Thanksgiving visit, only to be overshadowed by the arrival of Ariel Hernandez, a young boy whose mother died fleeing with him from Cuba on a raft. The ensuing immigration battle puts Miami in a glaring spotlight, captivating the nation and entangling Lizet's entire family, especially her mother.
I think any work of fiction has the potential to touch someone, to impact them, regardless of content. However, those books where you see your own experience mirrored in characters’ lives tend to mean more. They validate you, make you feel less alone. For me, Make Your Home Among Strangers was one such book. The story of its protagonist, Lizet, was one I could easily identify with, one that made me nod my head and think “I’ve totally felt that!” at almost every page. So, in this way, it’s special.
There are not, at least as far as I know, many books about first-generation Latino college students, and Jennine Capó Crucet has talked about how she wrote this book with that specific audience in mind. So, for me, a first generation Latina college student, reading Make Your Home Among Strangers was this process of understanding that others felt the way I have over the past few years and recognizing similar experiences, while also appreciating the differences between my life and Lizet’s—there is no universal Latina reality.
Which is not to say that Make Your Home Among Strangers was only a book about Latinas in college, or that only Latinos who’ve gone to college should read it—I imagine that anyone might read this book and gain something from it, regardless of ethnicity or situation. However, for me, the sense of recognition and belonging I felt while reading this book were what stood out, what made me stop and think.
I think of that moment, freshman year, when my White roommate would make offhand comments about Mexicans that she didn’t intend to be offensive, but only served to make me feel more alienated in an already uncomfortable environment. I think about all the comments about “affirmative action” I’ve received from fellow students when I reveal that I attend college on a full-tuition scholarship for Hispanic merit recognition. I think about the complete befuddlement and lostness that I felt (and sometimes still feel) when attempting to navigate the complex world of college—sure, there’s the office of academic success and intercultural affairs, which exists to help students like me, but the last thing I want to do is admit that I’m in over my head.
For all these reasons, Lizet’s story resonated with me. I’m not Cuban and I certainly can’t speak to those specific themes in the book, but she and I have much more in common than is typical when I read a work of fiction. This is, again, why books written by marginalized authors, about marginalized characters, are so important. Recognizing yourself in a book is more validating than one might think, and that’s what made Make Your Home Among Strangers so important to me.
