42 pages • 1 hour read
Jennine Capó CrucetMake Your Home Among Strangers
Jennine Capó CrucetFiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2015A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 21-25Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary
The night of Noche Buena, Lizet calls Omar. He asks her about school, and he forgives her for being distracted and confused. They talk, and Omar makes his intentions clear: “What we are is bigger than talking every night on the phone, El” (205). Omar comes over Christmas morning, and eases all tension in the family. Lizet admires the way he fits so perfectly, when she does not. Lizet makes a vow not to have sex with Omar, to maintain her resolve to end their relationship, but when Omar brings Lizet to the beach to deliver her Christmas gift—a small diamond engagement ring—Lizet pushes him down and they have a quick, angry encounter. Omar takes that act as a yes, although Lizet says nothing. She reflects on the ring: “A ring that said, ‘You’re a good investment.’ It felt heavy on my finger” (211).
Chapter 22 Summary
Each morning after Christmas, Lizet waits impatiently for her grades to arrive. Meanwhile, Omar wants to make big plans to go clubbing on New Year’s Eve—Lizet hesitates, afraid that she will learn she can’t face high school friends and pretend to be happy and successful. Finally, she gets her grades in the mail. To her surprise, they are good—one A, and a line of B minuses—which means no academic probation. Despite this success, Lizet doesn’t feel proud of herself; she merely feels like “the dread lurking under the last month of my life—was over” (215).
To celebrate Y2K, Lizet and Omar go to a club called Ozone. On the way, Omar makes a jab at Lizet’s mom being crazy over Ariel Hernandez. Lizet realizes he has made the jab later, and she becomes angry, picking a fight with him at the club. Eventually, she drags Omar back to the car before midnight, for more angry sex. While in the car, Lizet decides to go with her mother to the Ariel rally the next day.
Chapter 23 Summary
Lizet wakes up early to go to the rally with Mami. While getting ready, she wakes up Leidy, who warns her not to go: Leidy says that Mami lies about herself, makes up stories, and coopts other people’s trauma to fit in. Lizet goes anyway and feels confused and overwhelmed by her mother’s new friends, and Mami’s lack of introductions. They all wait outside Ariel’s house until he appears, and in that moment, Lizet is swept away by the emotions of seeing Ariel for the first time.
The magic disappears when Caridaylis, Ariel’s relative and caretaker, comes out, and Mami begins to cry. Lizet becomes jealous of Caridaylis, whom Mami thinks is so amazing; Lizet feels angry that her mother has never recognized her hard work, the work she has done to better their lives. Lizet and Mami fight, briefly, but soon reconcile tearfully. Lizet realizes her mother, just like Lizet, is trying to reinvent herself so she can fit into her new single life.
Chapter 24 Summary
Lizet goes with Mami to the rally that Tuesday, to learn what the US government has decided about Ariel’s political asylum. When the family comes out looking exhausted and sad, Mami knows immediately that something is wrong. The family announces that Ariel will be deported in two weeks— Ariel’s Cuban father has sole custody, and family members living in America cannot request asylum on his behalf. Mami becomes the subject of news attention when she screams and collapses onto the ground, begging for another answer.
Lizet separates herself a bit from Mami, only to realize that her mother has fainted and fallen to the ground. With Mami in danger of being trampled, Lizet tries to reach her mother and is hit; she is ultimately sent away by Mami’s new friends, who don’t realize that Lizet is Mami’s daughter. Lizet cries “Soy su hija! I’m her daughter!” (248), but the women don’t turn back.
Chapter 25 Summary
Omar brings Lizet to the airport when Mami leaves early for an Ariel rally at the last minute. Back at school, Lizet feels overwhelmed by the number of people demanding she make some kind of statement about Ariel. The RA even comes by to remind her of the support available to her on campus. Lizet again feels like the token Cuban: “I might as well have been Caridaylis herself, the way people kept asking me what I thought” (250).
Lizet signs up for an introductory lab with Professor Kaufmann, a German immigrant and award-winning biologist, and feels a connection with the professor and lab work. Lizet is the only person to pass the exam on sterile lab conditions, and she is thrilled. Later, she meets Ethan in the library, and he invites her to a biweekly study hour. They get sandwiches and chat, and Lizet lies about her engagement ring. Ethan encourages Lizet to get to know Professor Kaufmann, with whom Lizet has an enthusiastic conversation.
Chapter 21-25 Analysis
In these chapters, Lizet confronts the shifting and malleable nature of identity, and the ways that she values herself compared to how others value her, often through her own and through others’ interactions with the Ariel Hernandez saga: “For so many people there he was a mirror, some version or idea of yourself, some Baby You, fresh off a boat or plane and alone, but still hopeful…” (236).
Mami begins to lie about herself to friends and to national news networks, claiming she had two children in Cuba and brought them to America, just like Ariel’s mother brought him. This lie disgusts Leidy, an actual single mother, and it forces Lizet to accept that Mami, in trying to reshape herself, is leaving them behind; much like Lizet lied to fit into Rawlings, Mami lies to fit in in Little Havana, where being a refugee has more cultural cachet.
Just as Lizet’s shifting circumstances have altered her identity, Mami’s changing identity as a divorcee living in Little Havana has also changed her relationship with her daughters. At one point, Mami says to Lizet, “I look at you now and I don’t even recognize you […] You’re a bad person” (240). Most likely, Mami’s feelings of loss and grief for Ariel parallel the feeling that she’s losing a daughter to whom she can no longer relate. Mami’s harsh words are as much about her own change as they are about Lizet’s, but her statement forces Lizet to wonder question her own worth, and whether she has worth in the eyes of others.
In contrast to Mami, who thinks ill of Lizet for going to school and for changing from a “true Miami” girl like Caridaylis to something more American, Omar sees Lizet as an investment, giving her an engagement ring that Lizet views as both a weight and a statement of how much he values her. Lizet feels skeptical of his love and questions whether she’s worthy of it. She does not believe she is a “good investment,” because she is certain of her inability to be anything but a girl from Hialeah.
Lizet’s struggle to understand her value to others only confuses her more: She wants to please not only Mami, Leidy, and Omar, but also Professor Kaufmann, Jillian, and Ethan, and each group perceives her in different ways. Despite her wish to please everyone, Lizet realizes that she, like Ariel, can only live in one world.
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By Jennine Capó Crucet
