From the author of Make Your Home Among Strangers, essays on being an "accidental" American-an incisive look at the edges of identity for a woman of color in a society centered on whitenessIn this sharp and candid collection of essays, critically acclaimed writer and first-generation American Jennine Capó Crucet explores the condition of finding herself a stranger in the country where she was born. Raised in Miami and the daughter of Cuban refugees, Crucet examines the political and personal contours of American identity and the physical places where those contours find themselves smashed: be it a rodeo town in Nebraska, a university campus in upstate New York, or Disney World in Florida. Crucet illuminates how she came to see her exclusion from aspects of the theoretical American Dream, despite her family's attempts to fit in with white American culture-beginning with their ill-fated plan to name her after the winner of the Miss America pageant.In prose that is both fearless and slyly humorous, My Time Among the Whites examines the sometimes hopeful, sometimes deeply flawed ways in which many Americans have learned to adapt, exist, and-in the face of all signals saying otherwise-perhaps even thrive in a country that never imagined them here.

CONTENTSI: EARLY ENCOUNTERSWhat We Pack, 3¡Nothing Is Impossible in America!, 21Magic Kingdoms, 44II: VARIOUS IMMERSIONSSay I Do, 71Going Cowboy, 99The Country We Now Call Home, 116III: RESISTANCE IN ACTIONEase of Exit, 137Imagine Me Here, or How I Became a Professor, 154A Prognosis, 175ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, 197