RaveThe Los Angeles Review of Books... remarkable ... a thoughtful exploration of what it means to be a first-generation college student, a child of immigrants, and a professor to boot ... explores the tension between immigrants’ culture and the American Dream, especially since, as the essays demonstrate so painfully, the American Dream wasn’t designed with immigrants (or people of color more generally) in mind ... While such moments of analysis can take the reader out of the memoir-like moments of the book — and thus the illusion that we’re simply reading autobiographical stories — Capó Crucet’s analysis is exactly why My Time Among the Whites is vital reading for Trumpian times ... Capó Crucet’s clear-eyed examination of whiteness demonstrates that Trump isn’t what ails us; he’s the symptom, not the disease ... emerges as a salve. It incisively traces the ideologies that led to Trump, such as the American Dream, and indicts our adherence to these ideologies, many of which are deeply internalized.
Carmen Gimenéz Smith
RaveLos Angeles Review of BooksIn speaking another colonizer’s language — English — Giménez Smith twists the language upon itself and, in referencing the nativist rhetoric of the Trump regime, undercuts his key slogans and ideas ... In \'Make America Mongrel Again,\' Giménez Smith writes that \'Mongrel is multiplatform art that critiques, high and low culture, and deploys a pointed critique borne of dismay and urgency.\' I can’t think of a better description of Be Recorder After the 2016 United States presidential election I found myself paralyzed and hopeless; Be Recorder gives me hope. Be Recorder is necessary reading for our dark times. The collection reminds us of the rich, interconnected histories between both Americas, North and South, the one we live in and the one we wish we lived in.
