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Summary
Summary
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, winner of the International Latino Book Award for Best Latino-themed Fiction 2016, Longlisted for the 2015 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.
Named a best book of the season by Cosmopolitan , Vanity Fair , Harper's Bazaar , Redbook , Bustle , NBC Latino and Men's Journal
The arresting debut novel from award-winning writer Jennine Capó Crucet
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.
Pulled between life at college and the needs of those she loves, Lizet is faced with difficult decisions that will change her life forever. Urgent and mordantly funny, Make Your Home Among Strangers tells the moving story of a young woman torn between generational, cultural, and political forces; it's the new story of what it means to be American today.
Author Notes
Jennine Capó Crucet is the author of two previous books and is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times . Her novel, Make Your Home Among Strangers , was a New York Times Editor's Choice book, the winner of the 2016 International Latino Book Award, and was cited as a best book of the year by NBC Latino, the Guardian , and the Miami Herald ; it has been adopted as an all-campus read at over twenty-five American universities. Her short stories have been honored with the Iowa Short Fiction Award, an O. Henry Prize, and other awards. Raised in Miami, Florida, she is an associate professor in the Department of English and the Institute for Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Crucet's first novel (after the collection How to Leave Hialeah) chronicles the fraught relationship between insightful, smart Lizet Ramirez and her complicated Cuban-American family, all of whom get caught up in a politically tinged situation at the dawn of the 21st century. After Lizet's older sister, Leidy, gets pregnant in an attempt to get her high-school boyfriend to marry her, Lizet announces that she's been accepted with partial aid to a prestigious university in New York. Rather than see it as an opportunity, the family considers her leaving a betrayal. Shortly before Lizet departs from Miami, her father, Ricky, divorces their mother, Lourdes, and sells their house, forcing Lourdes, Leidy, and baby Dante to move to an area of Miami that's popular with recent immigrants. As Lizet tries to find her footing at school both socially and academically, Lourdes becomes obsessed with the case of Ariel Hernandez, a little Cuban boy whose mother died trying to get him to the U.S. Based on the real-life case of Elian Gonzales, Ariel's father, a Cuban national, wants him back. Ariel is being housed by relatives down the street from where Lourdes lives, and she quickly shuns her daughters and grandchild in favor of helping Ariel's relatives campaign for his right to stay in Florida. There are a couple of bland threads involving boys, namely Omar, Lizet's Miami beau, who wants her to come home, and Ethan, a senior at her university who seems destined for great things; Crucet's story is best when focused on Lizet's family dynamic. The dialogue is particularly superb, bristling with realistic tension. Lizet may not always be the most likable character, but this only adds to a story that always rings true. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* While Crucet's (How to Leave Hialeah, 2009) bildungsroman is specific to Cuban American Lizet Ramirez and her quest to find out who she is amid the cacophony of life in the U.S., it succeeds on such a universal level that Lizet could easily be a coming-of-age poster child. In Miami's Little Cuba, Lizet has excelled at one thing, academics. Despite attending a subpar high school in an impoverished neighborhood, she applied to, and has been accepted (with a scholarship) at, a prestigious New England college. Unlike her older sister, Leidy, who aspires to matrimony and motherhood (not necessarily in that order), Lizet has career visions. Lizet is not the first child in fiction or life to confound her family with great aspirations, but Crucet crafts her with such sympathy that watching her evolve is utterly compelling from start to finish. And it is a stroke of genius that Lizet's internal tumult is aligned with a fictionalized version of the 1999 arrival of five-year-old Cuban refugee Elián González, here called Ariel Hernandez. Throw in a subplot about Lizet's mother reeling from her recent divorce, a move to a new home, plus life on campus, and you have a brilliantly crafted, sumptuous tale.--Chavez, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
NEUROTRIBES: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, by Steve Silberman. (Avery, $19.) Two scientists - Leo Kanner in America and Hans Asperger in Vienna - independently identified autism. But while Asperger celebrated his subjects' differences, Kanner's placing of blame for the syndrome onto parents made his discovery "a source of shame and stigma for families worldwide." Had Asperger's attitude prevailed, autism may have had radically different connotations today, Silberman argues. THE AUTOMOBILE CLUB OF EGYPT, by Alaa AI Aswany. Translated by Russell Harris. (Vintage, $17.) In post-World War II Cairo, with Egypt headed toward revolution, Abd el-Aziz, newly bankrupt, has taken a menial job at a club for wealthy Europeans. After a confrontational episode at work, Abd el-Aziz is killed, leaving his children in desperate financial straits. The author, one of the Middle East's most popular, offers keen insight into midcentury Egypt's colonial tensions. PRIMATES OF PARK AVENUE: A Memoir, by Wednesday Martin. (Simon & Schuster, $16.) Martin, who has a background in cultural anthropology, details her bewildering and opulent journey to the culturally remote enclave of mothers on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. She is soon inducted into these women's ranks, but still sees reflections of Jane Good all's researches in this "honeyed and moneyed" environment. SWEET CARESS: The Many Lives of Amory Clay, by William Boyd. (Bloomsbury, $17.) The plucky, if improbable, heroine of Boyd's novel brushes off the societal norms that might have constrained her. Her birth announcement in 1908 mistakenly identified her as a boy, and her unhappy father tried to kill them both, yet she succeeds in building a life as a roving photographer. The novel is interspersed with photos meant to be Clay's work. INFESTED: How the Bed Bug Infiltrated Our Bedrooms and Took Over the World, by Brooke Borel. (University of Chicago, $16.) Human life has long been intertwined with these bloodsucking arthropods, which have survived centuries of attempts to stamp them out. After personal exposure to the resurgent pests, Borel, a science journalist, developed a grudging appreciation. MAKE YOUR HOME AMONG STRANGERS, by Jennine Capó Crucet. (Picador, $16.) This novel, a fictionalized account of the story of Elián González, follows a Cuban-American family in Miami. "With history onboard, Crucet shows us how journeys between cultures are almost impossible to navigate and family relationships are bound to dump us in choppy waters," Kathryn Ma wrote here. DAYS OF RAGE: America's Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence, by Bryan Burrough. (Penguin, $18.) An overview of insurgent groups active in the United States from the late 1960s into the 1980s, including the Black Liberation Army, the Weathermen and the Symbionese Liberation Army.
School Library Journal Review
In this beautifully written and compulsively readable coming-of-age novel, Lizet is the daughter of Cuban immigrants and the first in her family to attend college-and it's not Miami-Dade Community College, either; it's Rawlings College, an elite liberal arts school in upstate New York, where Lizet has received a full scholarship. While Lizet is away from home, experiencing snow for the first time and finding out just how poorly Hialeah Lakes High School prepared her for higher education, her family and boyfriend Omar continue their lives in Miami and don't understand what Lizet is doing. It's 1999, and Lizet's mother is caught up in the case of five-year-old Cuban refugee Ariel Hernandez (a fictionalized but essentially accurate version of the Elián González case), which serves as a mirror for Lizet's own situation of being torn between two cultures. Lizet's trips home at Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter reveal the growing distance between where she came from and where she wants to go. VERDICT Capó Crucet has created an utterly believable character in Lizet, whose struggles with family, studies, friendships, culture, identity, and the nature of home will resonate with older teens who are preparing to leave their own childhood homes.-Sarah Flowers, formerly of Santa Clara County (CA) Library © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Lizet Ramirez, the first in her Cuban immigrant family to attend college, must learn to navigate academia's culture of privilege alone as her family breaks apart. It's Thanksgiving Day 1999. Overwhelmed with the microaggressions inherent in being one of the few nonwhite students at an elite East Coast university, Lizet saves her work-study wages for a surprise trip home to Little Havana, Florida, to see her family. But this is also the same day that Ariel Hernandez, a 5-year-old Cuban boy who saw his mother die on a raft as they escaped to America, arrives in the state. Advocating for Ariel's well-being quickly becomes Lizet's mother's raison d'tre. The twin narratives play off each other in a masterful way: the battle for Ariel to remain in America echoes Lizet's own story of the breakup of her family and her formation of identity on an epic scale. Here, perfectly articulated through Lizet, is the experience of being a first-generation child of immigrants in Americathe lack of cultural capital, the casually racist comments of fellow students, the facade of campus diversity. "I'd yet to see a Latino professor on the Rawlings campus, though I knew from pictures in the school's guidebook that there were a few somewhere," Lizet wistfully notes. Here, too, is worldbuilding at its finestCrucet crafts a rich setting and supporting characters to go along with her astute cultural analysis. Yet, while it's clear what Lizet doesn't wantexpulsion, her boyfriendwhat she wants is less clear. Perhaps this is the point; she's a college freshman. But above all, in Lizet's story, we have a thrilling, deeply fulfilling journey of a young woman stepping into her own power. This debut novel from Crucet (How to Leave Hialeah, 2009) heralds the birth of a talented novelist to watch. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Raised in a Cuban immigrant household in Miami, Lizet Ramirez applies to and accepts an offer from a prestigious liberal arts college in Upstate New York without her parents' knowledge. As this act is so far out of their experience, they interpret it as a betrayal, one that in some ways precipitates the breakup of the family. Lizet returns home Thanksgiving Day, the same day that young Ariel Hernandez arrives in Miami and becomes the center of a public battle between anti-Castro Cubans and the U.S. government, a conflict in which Lizet's mother becomes deeply involved. (Ariel is clearly modeled on the six-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez, whose mother died at sea en route to seeking asylum in the United States in 1999). While Lizet struggles in school, the problems of her family, who cannot comprehend her choices, pull her back, as does her loyal boyfriend, Omar, to whom she is nominally engaged. -VERDICT Told largely in flashback by an older and wiser Lizet, this coming-of-age story achieves a wry and wistful tone. -Debut novelist Crucet depicts with insight and subtlety the culture shock, confusion, guilt, and humiliations of the first-generation college student surrounded by privilege. [See Prepub Alert, 2/9/15.]--Lauren Gilbert, -Sachem P.L., Holbrook, NY © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.