Week 8: Make Your Home Among Strangers

This week we read and discussed the book Make Your Home Among Strangers by Jennine Capó Crucet. This book touched on several different topics, and it led to some conflict around the campus this week. Anyways, the book explored a Latina woman's journey to college. One of the topics that the book focused on was the question on what constitutes a home. Is it the place you are born? Is it where you spent the majority of your life? This theme was displayed several times, but the one which affected me the most was of Ariel. He was a six year old bot who made it to America on a raft, but his mother passed away on the journey. Through the class discussions I discovered that this was based on a real story. Elian Gonzalez was brought to America in 2000, but since his mother passed away, there was a huge debate on if he should be able to stay in America with his cousins or if he should be sent back to Cuba to be with his father. America and Cuba both attempted to get the two sides to reach an agreement, but sadly, that never happened and he had to be forcibly removed from the home in Florida. The debate was on the base of what his home should be. Should it have been with his father or with his family in America where his mother had been trying to get to. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/722917.stm 
While we were discussing Ariel and Elian, we were also told the story of a former Georgia Southern professor who made the journey from Cuba to America. Gaspar Leiva was an English professor in Cuba, but he wanted to escape in order to provide better opportunities for his family. To make his story shorter, he built a boat to sail across to Florida, and it passed the initial inspection so he was able to sail it because he claimed to be a fisherman. Then he encountered a Cuban spy out at sea who reported him to Cuban authorities. He heard them near him, but thankfully they were not able to see him. After three days out at sea, he and his two sons were losing their hope and were beginning to feel the hunger and thirst. Just as they were losing hope, Gaspar saw the signs of a lighthouse, and shortly after this they caught the attention of a fishing boat. They called the Coast Guard who gladly helped Gaspar and his children make it to shore safely. After this he was able to get certification to teach Spanish. Stories like these and Elian's show me just how much some people are willing to go through in order to reach America and to call it their home. Therefore, to me a home is the place which you long to be and the place where you would give anything to be.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article118282148.html 
Another theme from the book was about privilege. Crucet spoke on this during her speech on campus Wednesday afternoon. She posed this question," How many professors do you have which look like you?" I believe she just wanted to show that there is a gap between different cultures, and I think she wanted to point out that some people are categorized based on their race or traits. She stated how Latino's are often asked how their people feel about things. By this she was pointing out that whites are privileged because they have the ability to be independent but others are known by their race or ethnicity. This message was a difficult one to hear for some of the people in attendance, and the question and answer session got heated. I think that the question regarding why she chose to come speak at a white college was out of line and should have either been stated differently or not said at all. I also think the book burning that happened later that night were way out of line. What do y'all think of the incident? What about the speech from Crucet, did you get anything else from it? 
                                                 


https://firstgen.naspa.org/book/make-your-home-among-strangers