Scan barcode
A review by scottjbaxter
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet
4.0
Make Your Home Among Strangers tells the story of Lizet, a second generation Cuban American who becomes the first in her family to attend college. And she attends not just any college, but Cornell University. The author calls it Rawlings College -- an unfortunate choice, at least in my opinion, because, with Lizet, the narrator and main character, being from Florida, I kept confusing it with Rollins College -- but the school’s elite status, location, size, and the fact that the author is an alum, makes it difficult to think of any institution other than Cornell University. The novel resembles a memoir for probably the first half to two thirds. And I think I enjoyed that part of the book more than the later part. Lizet, the main character, describes her life in a series of flashbacks in her academic life, but most of the book is about her first semester of college.
Capo Cruzet captures the challenges of being a first generation, low income, student of color quite well. One of my favorite details is when she meets Jacqueline, another Latinx first generation student and realizes that Jacqueline plans to send every dollar of work study back to her family. A similar situation was described just today in the New York Times by Anthony Abraham Jack and his experiences as a first generation minority student at Amherst where he found himself working extra hours around campus so he could send money back home to his family.
Lizet struggles in her first semester at Rawlings when she is formally accused of plagiarism and forced to be part of a formal hearing on the issue. Lizet was not trying to deceive (usually an essential element of plagiarism) but genuinely did not know how to integrate a source into her essay making it clear which ideas were hers and which ideas belonged to a source. While Lizet is found not guilty, the hearing does make Lizet realize that the academic support system at Rawlings only noticed she existed after she was accused of plagiarism:
In her dorm, Lizet tries to open up and make connections by sharing more of her personal life. But this effort ends up demonstrating to Lizet just how large the gap is between her life in Miami with working class parents and the lives of the high income suburban professionals that make up most of Rawlings’ student body.
The later section of the novel focuses on the Elian Gonzalez affair and how it consumes Lizet’s family, especially her mother, Lourdes who has devoted every waking hour to demonstrations. This commitment eventually leads to Lourdes losing her job with the city and a fight that nearly completely rips apart Lizet’s family. I did not really like this section so much.
Capo Crucet does an excellent job, for the most part describing some of the challenges that first generation minority students have at elite colleges. It did remind me of the story of Robert Peace, although his story ended in tragedy. It is clear that the author cares deeply about these issues and has published some of her thoughts on the topics of if an elite college was the best choice for her and on the topic of how wealth plays a large role in elite college admissions in the New York Times. For those interested in more on these topics, the literature is vast, but I would suggest Frank Bruni’s Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Be as a place to start, especially if you are a parent or high school student thinking about elite colleges.
Capo Cruzet captures the challenges of being a first generation, low income, student of color quite well. One of my favorite details is when she meets Jacqueline, another Latinx first generation student and realizes that Jacqueline plans to send every dollar of work study back to her family. A similar situation was described just today in the New York Times by Anthony Abraham Jack and his experiences as a first generation minority student at Amherst where he found himself working extra hours around campus so he could send money back home to his family.
Lizet struggles in her first semester at Rawlings when she is formally accused of plagiarism and forced to be part of a formal hearing on the issue. Lizet was not trying to deceive (usually an essential element of plagiarism) but genuinely did not know how to integrate a source into her essay making it clear which ideas were hers and which ideas belonged to a source. While Lizet is found not guilty, the hearing does make Lizet realize that the academic support system at Rawlings only noticed she existed after she was accused of plagiarism:
I slid the pen away, and the man who’d attempted to explain the financial aid problem [that her student loans would change from subsidized to unsubsidized (higher interest, no deferral of interest until graduation) if her gpa dipped below a certain level] asked me, Do you have any questions?
I had so many but most were not about the hearing’s results. I wanted to ask: Where was everybody before that day? Why did it take this plagiarism hearing to get someone to notice that I was in major trouble in who other subject? If things were as bad this letter indicated, why hadn’t I seen my advisor since orientation?... Why did I feel like I’d tricked Rawlings into letting me in at all? How could I make that feeling go away? (pp 98-99)
In her dorm, Lizet tries to open up and make connections by sharing more of her personal life. But this effort ends up demonstrating to Lizet just how large the gap is between her life in Miami with working class parents and the lives of the high income suburban professionals that make up most of Rawlings’ student body.
That first semester of college, as I grew more and more impatient during phone conversations with Omar [her boyfriend], I started to tell anyone who asked that Omar was a monster. He was an animal -- more like an animal than a human. It seemed like what other people wanted to hear. To them, Omar looked the part, with his earrings and close-cut hair and goatee, the wide shoulders, the dark brows, him leaning on his Integra and throwing a sideways peace sign in almost every photo of him I owned. The girls on my floor would ask, is that a gang sign? And instead of saying, No, you’re an idiot, I said, Maybe, Who knows with Omar? Other girls would feel bad for me and claim they understood: the girl who’d made everyone hot chocolate, Caroline, even went so far as to mention she’d read The House on Mango Street in AP English. She said she knew about the kinds of relationships that plagued my community, had nodded in a solemn way when I told her Yes, Omar could be rough. Part of me was angry that they were half right: My parents did have a version of that relationship, but it wasn’t at all accurate for me and Omar. Still, I was happy to have something to add to those late nights in the dorm’s common room when I was otherwise quiet, to be included in conversations even if I didn’t totally understand the part I was playing. When everyone around you thinks they already know what your life is like, it’s easier to play in to that idea -- it was easier to make Omar sound like a psycho papi chulo who wanted to control me. At the very least, it made trying to make friends simpler than it would’ve been had I tried to be a more accurate version of myself (pp 66-67).
The later section of the novel focuses on the Elian Gonzalez affair and how it consumes Lizet’s family, especially her mother, Lourdes who has devoted every waking hour to demonstrations. This commitment eventually leads to Lourdes losing her job with the city and a fight that nearly completely rips apart Lizet’s family. I did not really like this section so much.
Capo Crucet does an excellent job, for the most part describing some of the challenges that first generation minority students have at elite colleges. It did remind me of the story of Robert Peace, although his story ended in tragedy. It is clear that the author cares deeply about these issues and has published some of her thoughts on the topics of if an elite college was the best choice for her and on the topic of how wealth plays a large role in elite college admissions in the New York Times. For those interested in more on these topics, the literature is vast, but I would suggest Frank Bruni’s Where You Go Is Not Who You Will Be as a place to start, especially if you are a parent or high school student thinking about elite colleges.