delphinaris's review
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
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
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
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.
jessicaleza's review
5.0
As a first generation American, a daughter of Cuban refugees, this book gave me all the feels.
_________________
"The American Dream, commonly told: .... When they are born, you give your kids white American names so that their teachers can't tell what they are before meeting them, so that your kids don't suffer the way you suffered in school, and so that they won't eventually be 'inexplicably' denied apartments and jobs despite their abundant qualifications." (p28-29)
"Be safe, hide yourself in plain site; live up to the gift - the promise - of your white-girl name." (p. 37)
"I've come to see the American Dream for what it really is: a lie my parents had little choice but to buy into and sell to me, a lie that conflated working hard with passing for, becoming, and being white." (p. 40)
"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 the ubiquitousness as a kind of neutrality or regularness that renders their race and culture invisible to themselves." (p. 80)
"I never danced, knowing whatever I did with my body on a dance floor would make me stand out among the white folks." (p. 90)
"...as a light-skinned Latinx woman, I often accidentally trespass into moments that are essentially displays of white power intended only for other whites. ... White people who misread me as also white sometimes display the kind of pervasive racism usually reserved for whites-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." (p. 110).
Spotlighting (p. 166)
Masking (p. 171)
Somatic expressions of stress (p 177)
Cubans and mental health (p. 187)
_________________
"The American Dream, commonly told: .... When they are born, you give your kids white American names so that their teachers can't tell what they are before meeting them, so that your kids don't suffer the way you suffered in school, and so that they won't eventually be 'inexplicably' denied apartments and jobs despite their abundant qualifications." (p28-29)
"Be safe, hide yourself in plain site; live up to the gift - the promise - of your white-girl name." (p. 37)
"I've come to see the American Dream for what it really is: a lie my parents had little choice but to buy into and sell to me, a lie that conflated working hard with passing for, becoming, and being white." (p. 40)
"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 the ubiquitousness as a kind of neutrality or regularness that renders their race and culture invisible to themselves." (p. 80)
"I never danced, knowing whatever I did with my body on a dance floor would make me stand out among the white folks." (p. 90)
"...as a light-skinned Latinx woman, I often accidentally trespass into moments that are essentially displays of white power intended only for other whites. ... White people who misread me as also white sometimes display the kind of pervasive racism usually reserved for whites-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." (p. 110).
Spotlighting (p. 166)
Masking (p. 171)
Somatic expressions of stress (p 177)
Cubans and mental health (p. 187)