Fabulous Fiction Firsts #559

Tue, 10/13/2015 - 8:31pm by muffy

Make Your Home Among Strangers * * is the debut novel by award-winner (Iowa Short Fiction Prize) Jennine Capó Crucet, a Miami native who served as a counselor/mentor to first-generation college kids at a nonprofit called One Voice, an experience that greatly informs her writing.

Set in both Miami and New York around the time the Elian Gonzalez immigration ordeal was unfolding, Cuban American Lizet Ramirez is the first in her family to attend college (made possible by a full-ride to a prestigious New England one), and the first to leave her blue-collared neighborhood of Little Cuba, a decision that might have precipitated the breakup of her family.

Academically and socially, Lize struggles on campus, and is looking forward to an unannounced Thanksgiving visit home - 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, newly divorced and unmoored, becomes deeply involved.

"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."

"But above all, in Lizet's story, we have a thrilling, deeply fulfilling journey of a young woman stepping into her own power."

For further reading: How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez; The Book of Unknown Americans by Cristina Henríquez; and the much anticipated second novel We Never Asked for Wings by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, author of the 2012 Reading List award winner The Language of Flowers.

* * = 2 starred reviews