A review by kindledspiritsbooks
Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet

4.0

I first heard of this book in the newspaper. Not in the review pages like I normally would, but in a news article detailing how students at Georgia Southern University had burned copies of it after being incensed by frank discussions of the experience of first generation university attendees, white privilege and the strain of code switching. Burning books disgusts me to the very core of my soul and I was so horrified reading about this incident and the horrible threats that the author suffered after coming to speak at Georgia Southern, I felt compelled to buy the book and read it to find what exactly what got these students' knickers in such a twist. The novel tells the story of Lizet, a young Cuban-American woman who leaves her home in Miami to attend a prestigious college in upstate New York. As she is leaving, her parents marriage breaks down, her sister is struggling with single motherhood, she is feeling pressure to commit to her long term high school boyfriend and the arrival a young Cuban refugee is sparking a wave of protests in her neighbourhood. Once she arrives in New York she faces unfamiliar challenges in her course work and racist microaggressions from her fellow students. Lizet feels torn between the worlds of Miami and New York, wanting to belong in both but feeling welcomed by neither and the reader feels her anguish viscerally. My heart absolutely broke for her each time she faced rejection from her old world and her new one. Anyone who reads this book and feels it’s ‘racist towards white people’ has missed the point so spectacularly that they may never be able to find it. Those who read it with an open mind and heart will find an engaging, intelligent and often heartbreaking coming of age story.