Selected as an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review, Make Your Home Among Strangers follows Lizet Ramirez, the daughter of Cuban immigrants, on her journey through her first year of college. Lizet navigates complex issues of race, class, and gender both at the fictional, ultra-elite Rawlings College and with her family and friends back home in Miami. Both humorous and solemn, the book earnestly depicts a wide range of subjects familiar to many college students, but particularly telling of the experiences of first generation college students and students of color.
Make Your Home Among Strangers is the sixth Common Read at UMass Amherst since the program began in 2011 with A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind (subsequent Common Reads were Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, No Impact Man by Colin Beavan Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman, and The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas by Anand Giridharadas). Each year, incoming first-year and transfer students receive a copy of the selected book at Summer New Students Orientation (NSO) and are asked to read it before returning in the fall. The project, the largest of its kind in New England, is provides more than 5,000 new first-year students every year with a common intellectual experience linking them to one another, introducing them to the academic work of a research university, and helping them reflect on themes important in their transition from high school to college.