Welcome to Litsy!

I listened to several shorter audiobooks in a row, this one is also about 4 hours. A new-to-me author, these essays are about Crucet‘s life, growing up in her culture & then adjusting to living where she is a minority. She narrates it very well. My last couple of audios have been from the bottom of my TBR Litsy list—trying to cross some off. Good recs from Littens.

I loved this short memoir of essays about a first generation Cuban-American who explores race, family, and identity.

4⭐️

#arc

Glad I read this short biography. Wish it had been longer. I have not read Capo Crucet' s fiction but after reading this I am going to pick one up. Anyone have a recommendation for me! 3.5 🌟

Jennine Capó Crucet is hilarious and at times this book felt like I was listening to a stand-up comedy routine. However, much to my surprise this short book turned out to be an impactful essay collection. Thanks @megabooks for the recommendation. ? #OwnVoices

It‘s interesting that Crucet‘s talk at a college made a bunch of racists angry, b/c 1) everything she says about white privilege & how it has ALWAYS functioned in the US is true, & 2) they were basically proving that by getting all in their hurt feels and burning her book. I liked her discussion of passing, how it can be both a good & sad thing. Some stories of her life were fun, a couple less so, but overall an insightful & worthy read. 4/5 ⭐️

White people who misread me as also white sometimes display the kind of pervasive racism usually reserved for white-only spaces. They inadvertently include me in these white power moments, ones that we aren‘t supposed to witness, which are perpetrated by the kind of well-meaning white folks—people who genuinely don‘t consider themselves racists—when they‘re sure we aren‘t around to hear them.

Many white people I‘ve met often think of themselves as culture-less, as vanilla: plain, boring, American white. What they are revealing when they say this, which they often do in jest, is how little race impacts their lives, how whiteness is ubiquitous to them, and they mistake that ubiquitousness as a kind of neutrality or regularness that renders their race and culture invisible to themselves.

...this is, after all, a story about the American Dream, right? Which means that many things will need to be unjustly eradicated.

I‘ve heard such good things about this essay collection, and had put it on my TBR when I first heard about it. Then it made a bunch of racist white kids mad and they burned the fucking book, so I was like “Okay, take my money and fuck those douchebags.” #nowreading

This is a collection of personal essays from a Cuban-American woman living in a world designed for the comfort of European-American men. Among other things, Crucet discusses the first-generation college experience, wedding and funeral rituals, the Disney machine, racism in academia, and politics: Cuba, after all, buried a populist demagogue just as the U.S. elected one. Her voice is humorous, her prose liquid, her points sharp. Recommended.

My bff is Indian. Her college roomie was black. She said then, “I‘m so glad I had a minority roommate.” I didn‘t get it. But after reading this book & ones like over 20 years, I finally get how after a day of seeing people & profs who don‘t look like you, reading books by white people, etc., how comforting that must have been.

This book is a tight 200 pgs about being Latinx in academia. Other than a weird chapter about weddings, I loved it! 4.5⭐️

Okay, my book-buying ban lasted a day. 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️ I picked this one up because I loved her first book (tagged 👇🏻), and there has been so much controversy around this book, my library has not purchased it.

Definitely makes me think of a #borderline because Jennine is a first-generation Cuban-American. #movember @Cinfhen

(BTW, my favorite Madonna song!)

I don't read a lot of essay collections so I don't know how this compares. I really enjoyed pretty much every essay in this.

"... we bemoan the inaccuracy and misinformation perpetuated by American writers and reporters who see Cuba as material, how their vague efforts to bring attention to the island and its people are in actuality silencing them, because by telling their own version of Cuba--a version white American audiences are receptive toward because the messenger often looks and sounds like them--they are replacing the islands true voices with their own."

I wanted to read this after some students in Georgia burned the author's books after she spoke there. I'd say there's a bit of shared thematic content between this group of essays and her novel, Make Your Home Among Strangers, but this is a quick read and moves farther into the present. Not surprisingly, the Georgia incident is not the first time she's had to deal with white tears at a college when she has been brought there for the campus read.

If I bought books for my sister for Christmas, does it matter if I read them before wrapping? 🙋👾🐎😁🤫

I am so enjoying the #WeeklyForecast. It's a perfect goal setting time frame. (Apparently long term goals are not in my nature.) This is a somewhat prioritized list.

While the #catherbuddyread hasn't officially started, I want to get a jump on it because I am a slow and polygamous reader.

Dracula will be my driving-to-work listen this week.

I doubt I will finish anything.

Thanks for the wonderful and fun idea @Cinfhen!

Am I crazy? Shouldn't this be "etymology"?

I just know all these holds I've got will come in at the same time. Oooo... In time for the next #deweyreadathon?

OMG! I love this essay collection so hard!!! Another read for this year‘s Decatur Book Festival!! #netgalley #DBF2019

Awesome book mail this morning! This one was near the top of my must-read list. I loved Jennine Capó Crucet‘s novel, MAKE YOUR HOME AMONG STRANGERS, which I will admit I 100% bought for the cover, but was delighted to find the inside was equally awesome. It‘s out September 3rd (along with a LOT of other amazing 2019 releases that day.) ???