by Delaney Sullivan
Jennine Capó Crucet acknowledges in an interview that she wrote her novel, Make Your Home Among Strangers, to someday “serve as a kind of roadmap for the first-generation college student’s experience” (Crucet 3). As she acknowledges, college is a formative time; people change, find themselves, better understand their career objectives, and really learn their sexuality. The white college experience is usually expressed in young adult literature and media as fun, exciting, and full of underage drinking and usually, with some support or pressure from similarly educated parental figures. In contrast, Crucet’s novel captures the first-generation minority college experience, in which the parents do not accept or support the elite and expensive college right-of-passage and do not have any of their own experiences to draw on. Based on real events, Make Your Home Among Strangers (2015) begins on Thanksgiving 1999 in Miami. Ariel Hernandez has just washed ashore in a raft from Cuba along with his dead companions, including his mother, and as the government struggles to determine what to do with him, Miami rallies around him. As Lizet Ramirez navigates her first year at Rawlings University, in upstate New York, unprepared for the academics and the sea of unapproachable white peers that use their ignorance as a shield, her mother is going through an identity crisis of her own. Following her messy divorce from Lizet’s father, Lourdes Ramirez launches herself completely into the Ariel Hernandez case, advocating on behalf of his family for his right to stay in the country. Although told from Lizet’s perspective, Make Your Home Among Strangers focuses on this mother-daughter pair, exploring the discovery or rediscovery of gender and ethnic identity cross-generationally – Lizet and Lourdes sharing the narrative through parallel stories.
As she is thrown into this new environment at Rawlings, where her peers know little but assume a lot about her, Lizet begins to question her identity and critique the femininity of others. At Rawlings, the peak of femininity in college is putting on make-up, doing your hair, and getting dressed up in provocative clothing to go out and dance with boys. Lizet struggles with the Rawlings version of ‘going out’ versus the Miami version of ‘going out.’ When invited to go to a party she recalls the tame parties at college compared to the Miami club scene she is accustomed to, “I wasn’t interested in cheating on him and hooking up with white boys wearing visors with RAWLINGS SAILOR stitched across the front, and this version of night life was so vastly pathetic compared to the places in Miami” (Crucet 109). Lizet does not see the college scene as compatible with her idea of having fun; regardless of her relationship status, Rawlings parties are not her ideal arena for attracting or interacting with men. Lizet and her friend Jacquelin, who is also Hispanic, only agree to go to the party, “‘I just know my roommate said there’d be dancing, because she knows otherwise, I’m not interested’” (Crucet 110). Dancing is the one constant similar enough to remind her of her Cuban American roots and how she typically expresses her femininity in a party setting. Usually, the Rawlings parties do not have them, so they do not match her idea of fun or expression. In this college environment, nothing is quite matching her previous idea of femaleness, so she is forced to reevaluate and, ultimately, truly understand what that means to her.
Lizet’s beauty, and the expectations of her appearance, change as she is trust into the college atmosphere where the standards of femininity are very different. Even while she is getting ready for this rare weekend excursion, her style and hair choices are questioned by other girls on her floor. Every girl that enters the bathroom comments on the smoke as a product of her flat ironing her naturally curly hair, a product of her ethnicity; questioning her hair choices as they flip their naturally perfectly straight hair (Crucet 112). Lizet’s hair is a symbol of her girlhood and femininity; by transforming her hair to look like those of her peers and doing so in a way that calls attention. By beautifying her hair in an attempt to make it conform to the expected standard of beauty, straight hair, and then being ostracized for it diminishes her effort and unfeminizes her. Lizet sees her roommate, Jillian, as the ‘perfect’ beauty – although unoriginal and stuffy from the Miami standpoint – for the upstate New York environment where beauty equals femininity. She sees herself as woefully unharmonious with the status quo, but not unpretty. As the novel nears its conclusion, surprisingly Lizet and Jillian semi-reconcile and admit their mutual admiration of each other. One drunken night:
“Jillian was vomiting into our recycling bin, my hands holding her hair back from her face, and she marveled at my ability to keep it together, and we confessed how we each thought the other was so gorgeous, each of us taking compliments where we could’ve just as easily found insults: she said I was exotic … while I stroked her unbelievably slick ponytail and slurred, I’d kill you for this white-girl hair” (Crucet 366).
Probably the most profound revelation Lizet has from this and from her entire year at Rawlings is that her femininity and beauty, interchangeable in this sense, is only what she thinks it is and others are just as envious of her as she is of them. Admitting the flaws and assets of other women and herself helps Lizet own and define her own identify.
Lizet’s interactions with men and her perceptions of them change as she further realizes her sexual identity during her first year of college. She recalls the last time she has sex with Omar, her long-term boyfriend from home, before leaving for Rawlings, “He pinned my wrist behind my back and pulled me toward him. He breathed out hard through his nose – something he did a lot and a sign he was mad at himself for liking me so much” (Crucet 63). While having sex in the back of Omar’s car, Lizet is submissive, allowing Omar to move her where he wants her and control the situation. Lizet thinks, “I loved and hated his physical strength – the way he could just move me in and out of his way” (Crucet 64). This nature changes once she gets to Rawlings and is exposed to a completely different type of boy. Lizet is struck by Ethan’s lack of sexualization when approaching to her and how he is interested in her as a friend rather than a target for a relationship, “ – I have a boyfriend, I said. He didn’t even blink. Good for you, he said” (Crucet 117). This lack of trying is what initially attracts Lizet to Ethan. She is confused by this newfound attraction to a boy she normally would not go for; he is much older than her, skinny, intellectual, and – most importantly – white. After she finds herself attracted to Ethan and goes home for the holidays, the sex she has with Omar is very different than the timid role she usually plays. While at the beach she, “pushed him against the steps…it was me that did it…mean almost, like I was angry, like I was getting back at him. I pictured the steps digging into his spine and hurting him, doing it in this new way with almost no love” (Crucet 210). This is a very different Lizet; her sex is out of frustration with Omar, with her schooling, with her mother, with herself. She is using and discovering her sexuality in a way she was not before – instead of Omar having sex with her, she is having sex with him.
Lizet’s mother, Lourdes, has some of the same experiences as she undergoes her own search for identity. In the wake of her hostile and irreconcilable divorce with Lizet’s father, Lourdes finds herself out of the home she once shared with her family and unsure of her purpose once Lizet is away at college. Lourdes launches herself to Ariel’s defense and devotes all her time to advocating for his asylum in the United States. As Lourdes devotes herself to Ariel, she starts to rediscover her identity as a mother in Ariel’s caretakers. Lourdes becomes a spokesperson of sorts for the Hernandez family and for Cuban refugees, however she begins to lie about her origins and those of her family to make her story appear more Cuban. Liedy, Lizet’s sister, states:
“ – She told that Caridaylis girl that she was a single mom. She straight-up stole my life story with Roly but made it hers and put it in Cuba twenty years ago! She tells people we all three came on a raft together. She tells people I almost fell out of the raft on the second day, and you were a baby she was breast-feeding until her milk turned to dust…It’s like she’s Miss Dusty Tits on the news” (Crucet 228).
Why does Lourdes exaggerate her story to make it more like that of Ariel’s mother? She could be trying to elicit some sympathy from the crowd and curry favor to further her cause. Or she could be trying to get close to Ariel’s cousin and caretaker after his mother died, Caridaylis, and gain some more news time. Or what I think is most likely the reason, she sees a story like Ariel’s, and is trying to make her own past seem more ‘Cuban’ and more ‘authentic. At the rallies and protests, Lourdes does not introduce Lizet as her daughter, maintaining this façade. Lourdes is making her story more like Ariel’s mother, perhaps because she identifies with her or because she feels like a fraud advocating for immigration rights when her children were born in the United States. Whatever the reason, Lourdes is losing, either intentionally or inadvertently, her identity and adopting a new one; one where she is happier and has a purpose beyond that of her own children.
Lizet also adopts a version of this story her mother has created. While fighting with some other girls at Rawlings over the Ariel Hernandez case, she says “ ‘I’m from there! … I left when I was a baby. I still have family there and they all want out’ ” (Crucet 292). She knows she is lying but she does so anyway because it gives more validity to her story, or at least she thinks it does, while trying to get her ignorant white peers to understand the oppressive government of Cuba. It is an unfortunate consequence of being a minority that Lizet must lie about her past to make herself and her ethnicity seem more genuine in order for her experience to seem more important or for others to take her seriously. I wouldn’t go as far to say Lizet and her mother are experiencing identity crises, but they are going through significant identity changes as a result of their environment changes, both geographically and emotionally. It is also interesting that Crucet decided to place these this novel in the past rather than the present; there is just as many immigration issues today that these characters could have had centered their stories around. However, I think this historical setting puts more metaphorical distance between the mother and her daughter. Because there is no technology that enables Lizet to feel closer to home, she feels more inclined to acclimate to her new environment. This also makes her feel further away from Cuba and her Cuban-ness, and therefore more likely to do what she does, which is lie about her past.
Although both mother and daughter are experiencing similar, albeit separate, transformations their relationship nor familial connections do not blossom as a result. In fact, their issues never really get resolved, Lourdes claims that she forgives Lizet (conveyed through her sister, Leidy) but there is no conclusion or resolve. That mother/daughter love is not restored.
At college, Lizet is in a new environment unsupported by her family, not simply because they are not there but also because they do not support her from a far. Neither Lourdes nor her dead-beat father support Lizet financially or emotionally, mostly because they do not have the means to but also because they see her choice as a betrayal to her family and her culture. Of course, Lourdes still loves her daughter, but she soon searches for another daughter figure to fulfill her mothering instinct, which she finds in Caridaylis, Ariel Hernandez’s cousin and caretaker.
“A face smashed up with grief I’d never known. It looked like my mother’s face, which hovered close to Cari’s in that moment, streaming its own tears over cheeks tinged the orange of pepper spray, over skin rushed old by the weeks of lost sleep. Both of them with their eyes swollen and open in breathy crying – they could’ve been related. Cari could’ve been her daughter” (Crucet 350).
In this passage, the raid has occurred and Ariel has been taken by the U.S. government and Lourdes is comforting Cari. The similarities in their appearances and expressions begin to create this illusion to Lizet, she realizes that Cari is more of daughter than she is right now to her mother. I argue that primarily because Cari resembles the proud Cuban American, ultra-activist that she wishes both her herself and Lizet had become – a classic case of not living up to your parent expectations. Lourdes’ new identity closer resembles Cari, both physically and mentally. But Lourdes is not alone in this, “Home, it turned out, was just reluctant to talk to me” (Crucet 285).
Lizet quickly begins to find role models of her own that better fit the educated and successful archetype that she faults her mother for not fulfilling. She finds this in Dr. Kaufmann, a biology lab skills professor that captures Lizet’s instant awe and admiration, “she was, technically, the only immigrant: she was born in Germany … I realize this was a stretch thinking of Dr. Kaufmann as an immigrant the way my parents were” (Crucet 252). Despite this similar background, she still sees this professor as superior, most likely because of her education and prestige that her parents lack. Lizet takes notes, “as in they were tomorrow’s winning lottery numbers” and listens “with almost religious devotion”, feeling “validation” from her professor (Crucet 252-54). This first interaction with Dr. Kaufmann invokes an instant respect and devotion to her field and work, like nothing she has shown for her mother thus far. Lizet goes so far as to choose Dr. Kaufmann over her mother once she decides to attend the summer research opportunity rather than support her family in Miami. In true teenager fashion, Lizet is distancing herself from her family.
With these themes of emerging/reemerging identity and sexual agency, the issue of genre comes into question. The cross-generational aspects of the novel inherently push the boundaries of young adult literature, considering one of the main transformations occurs with someone who is, indeed, not a young adult. Make Your Home Among Strangers peeks into the genre of YA chick lit genre. Usually indicative of graphic sex scenes and “aspects of hyperfemininity and hypersexuality”, Elizabeth Bullen and Liz Parsons identify it as, “Sharing the same overt focus on heteronormative sexuality, embodiment, consumerism and friendship as their adult equivalents … model ways of being to girls approaching womanhood” (Bullen, Toffoletti, and Parsons 497-8). Certainly, the sections of the novel in which Lizet is focused on the college culture – getting drunk at campus parties, flirting with older RAs, considering cheating on her boyfriend, having sex with said boyfriend on a golf course – fit into this genre well. Even her, and to some extent her mother’s, search for identity amongst the white college environment certainly fits into the young adult literature archetype; discovering one’s identity is a canonical theme for all ages of children’s and young adult literature. The question of genre is not necessarily as important as how the portrayal of sexual identity is qualified in that genre.
Although Make Your Home Among Strangers focuses on the first-generation college experience, Crucet emphasizes how although Lizet’s issues are not as isolated to the university environment as she may think. The phenomenon of rediscovering and redefining personal and feminine identity is cross-generational in this novel. Lizet is better understanding her womanhood after going off to college and having new sexual experiences with men while Lourdes is better understanding her role as a mother while she devotes herself the care and advocacy of Ariel Hernandez. As a result of their changing identities as women, their mother-daughter relationship shifts. Familial love is pivotal in the novel; it’s the only thing that holds them together other than loyalty to one another, but even that is tenuous. Lizet’s love map is distorted, as is her mother’s, as both of their familial affections shift to what they deem are more deserving targets, more ideal representations of their family. The cross-generational aspects of the text call into question if these themes of emerging identity are really unique to young adult literature or if they are much more expansive.
Works Cited
Bullen, Elizabeth, et al. “Doing What Your Big Sister Does: Sex, Postfeminism and the YA Chick Lit Series.” Gender & Education, vol. 23, no. 4, July 2011, pp. 497–511. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/09540253.2010.499852.
Jennine Capó Crucet. Make Your Home Among Strangers. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2015.