Make Your Home Among Strangers

Racism and code-switching, or the need for people from marginalized communities to assume new behaviors and identities to fit into white systems of power, is a prominent theme in Make Your Home Among Strangers. Lizet is, at various points in the novel, made into a token Latina, seen as violent or “ghetto,” not taken seriously or disregarded as an authority, and rejected for her desire to work with and for poor communities of color.

Lizet experiences racism most acutely at Rawlings, where she feels the need to lie about her identity in order to suit the narrative that others have already created about her life. She lies about Omar’s personality and her relationship with him. She allows herself to become a stereotypical Cuban girl because it is easier than arguing with bias.

In other moments, Lizet is assumed to be violent or stupid because she is Cuban. Jillian accuses her of being racist against white people. Lizet’s feelings are monitored and judged more heavily than white girls’ feelings—when she gets into a fight with Tracy, a girl from her floor, she is blamed, though Tracy was the one mocking her.