juliajjshields's review against another edition
I loved this!! So funny, clever & insightful. This was narrated by the author and I loved how lively she recounted her stories.
While there were various sections, the following two stood out. Capo Crucet had some hot takes on Disney and the fantasies they feed us, while also exploring her relationship to & understanding of nature being through a Disney lens since in Miami, there weren’t really parks or greenery to play in. When someone said park, she thought Disney. I found this super fascinating & thought she touched on the ways capitalism can present itself as a solution to inequities that shouldn’t be there in the first place. I also absolutely loved the author’s description of white people weddings. I actually laughed out loud multiple times.
I appreciated learning more about Cuban history, culture & about Miami. How Cubans in Miami as Capo Crucet puts it, are white. They’re the majority population and it doesn’t cross their minds to think it to be different anywhere else. She also discusses her privilege as a light skin Latina & how that’s impacted her. Wonderful insight as well on being a university professor who was a first gen college student both at predominantly white institutions.
Overall, I really enjoyed this audiobook. I’d recommend it to anyone! Short, sweet & impactful. Her story telling was strong & I look forward to reading her novels in the future.
- “Our fantasies aren’t fantasies if given to us and not imagined by us”
- To white people regarding difficult topics: “Are you not yet uncomfortable because, despite this being about your people, you don’t think it’s about your people because as a white person, you’ve gotten to be just you your whole life?” OOF
corvid_ai's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
kpatrice362's review against another edition
3.0
For a memoir with a title that SLAPS that hard, I was expecting a bit more! The stories centered around her education and post-grad experience were definitely the most impactful. The only thing that kept me going was the brutally honest writing (and the fact that it’s short)
delphinaris's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.5
This book gave names to experiences that I didn't know how to name as a mixed passing person.
shhh_tamis_reading's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
saralynnburnett's review against another edition
5.0
Throughly enjoyed this book especially its audio form as the author covers being a first generation Cuban in America (outside of Miami). These essays are witty and full of wry observations that go deep while being absolutely on point and often hilarious. The piece about weddings really made me laugh. Picking up her other works asap!
jiyoung's review against another edition
3.0
Thoughts from a Cuban-American author on her alienation from predominantly white spaces. Her essays on her experiences in academia were compelling (both from her POV as a first gen immigrant student and later as a Latinx professor), but I didn’t fully click on many of her other essays. Some nice insights peppered throughout but I didn’t care for the Disney or wedding hall content.
mschlat's review against another edition
3.0
A number of essays about life as a first-generation Cuban American, set mostly in Miami (where the author and her family can see Cubans as a powerful force) and Lincoln, Nebraska (where the label of Cuban disappears under the Latinx label). I liked a lot of the discussion of college life (with one essay about Crucet's college experience and another about her life as an academic), and found her discussion of white weddings fascinating (she had an apartment in Lincoln adjacent to a space regularly rented for weddings and she eventually started crashing them). But I found the work as a whole breezier than I expected. Crucet addresses the issues of racism and inequity that I expected -sometimes quite straightforwardly - but nothing coalesced for me out of that discussion.