Week 8

Week 8: Home Among Strangers

          On Monday we came into class and prepared to talk and discuss about the first half of the of the book Make Your Home Among Strangers written by Jennine Capo Crucet. The book is centered around Lizet, a freshmen Cuban-american who most overcome many obstacles that a freshman may encounter. One of which is now feeling like an outsider because she is from a poorer family and is non-white and now is among wealthy white people who appear to be really fitting in and have things figured out.  

           In class we talked about our overall impressions of the book. Everyone was pretty indifferent to the book, and no one seemed to have any negative emotions toward the book. Personally I liked it.  Probably wasn't my favorite book ever but it seemed to me to be a completely logical choice of a book for a first year seminar class, because the book is almost completely about the college freshmen experience of Lizet. Although I cannot completely relate to everything that Lizet goes though, I think that most freshmen can say they felt like like an outsider at least once in college. We have talked about this before in class and it turns out there is a name for it. It is called the imposter syndrome . The book also deals with microaggression something I was ignorant about before this class so I thought the book also contained some useful information. So all in all a good book.

           Now on to the more interesting stuff. We did not meet on Wednesday because we were supposed to go and listen or at least live steam a talk that Crucet was gracious enough to come give personally at our school. The talk was pretty normal and she talked about what you would expect, diversity and inclusion and what drove her to write the book. During the Q&A session one person out apparently took offence to what Crucet said and challenged her and, in my option a kind of rude way. She asked her what gave her the right to come her and say that white people were privileged. Then the everyone was visibly shook. After this session the argument continued on twitter with just nasty tweets sent to the author and even a book burning. This unfortunately made nation news reflecting horribly on Georgia southern and probably made people who feel excluded either by race or economic class feel even more excluded. If anything this whole book burning and the ignorance that goes along with it proves the necessity for a book like Make your Home Among Strangers and a class like FYE that teaches diversity and Inclusion.