Make Your Home Among Strangers

Mami, or Lourdes Ramirez, is Lizet and Leidy’s mother. She was born in Cuba and came over as an adolescent, got pregnant with Leidy as a teenager, and married Papi. She has a tumultuous marriage, but is shocked when Papi leaves her and sells their home in Hialeah, forcing her to move into Little Havana. As she struggles to adapt to her new life without her husband, Mami becomes obsessed with the Ariel Hernandez case and particularly with Caridaylis, Ariel’s cousin and caretaker in America.

In her obsession over Ariel Gonzalez, Mami loses touch with her own daughters and her own family obligations. She loses her job and puts Leidy and Dante in financial peril, all to get closer to Caridaylis, whom Lizet believes is an easier-to-love replacement for Mami’s own children. Lizet never truly forgives Mami after she discovers Mami comforting Caridaylis in the wake of Ariel’s deportation. 

Papi (Ricky Ramirez) is Lizet’s father. He is also a Cuban immigrant who came to America via plane at age 14 and hasn’t been back to Cuba since. Papi works in construction and is mostly quiet and unobtrusive, though he sold the family home to hurt Mami, not realizing the impact it would have on Leidy and Lizet. He now lives back in Hialeah in an apartment complex called The Villas, with a coworker named Rafael.

Papi has some strange opinions about his children; at first, he thinks Lizet is a traitor to the family for going to college, and he often calls Dante a “mistake.” But Papi ends up being the only person in the family to support Lizet as she leaves for her internship. Although he doesn’t understand her choice, it doesn’t mean her decision is a bad one. 

Leidy is Lizet’s older sister. She graduated from high school two years before Lizet, and is now working at a salon in Miami, where she makes just enough money to pay for food and daycare for Dante. Leidy’s high school boyfriend Roly didn’t propose to her when Leidy wanted, so she stopped taking birth control and became pregnant with Dante. Leidy expected Roly to marry her, but he didn’t, and she became a single mom, living with Mami in Little Havana after Papi sold their house.

Rooted in Miami life, Leidy is deeply skeptical of Lizet’s college, telling Lizet to stop talking and acting like a white girl when she comes home. Leidy is enraged at Lizet when she chooses her internship over being Dante’s babysitter, and their relationship is scarred because of it. Eventually, Leidy settles down with a policeman named David and has three more children. She returns to her old neighborhood in Hialeah.

Jillian is Lizet’s roommate during her freshman year at Rawlings. She is a wealthy, white girl from New Jersey, and she has some flawed ideas about race and racism, which she loves to push on Lizet. Jillian is a difficult roommate, but ultimately bonds with Lizet over a shared drunken night in spring semester. Lizet envies Jillian for her money and her comfort, and the insight her family has given her about how to be successful. 

Omar is Lizet’s high school boyfriend. He is sweet, supportive, and incredibly handsome—Leidy wonders how Lizet could leave him. Lizet initially misses Omar but soon becomes confused about the relationship when Omar is unable to understand why being at Rawlings is important to her, despite all the challenges it poses. Omar proposes to Lizet, and she accepts, though ultimately they break up after the Ariel Hernandez deportation, saying a final goodbye at the airport after Easter. Omar is in many ways a relic of Lizet’s former self, and she clings to it and rejects it in equal part over the course of the novel. Omar eventually moves on from Lizet and marries another girl from Hialeah. 

Ariel Hernandez is a loosely fictionalized version of Elian Gonzalez, who became the subject of a legal battle in Miami in 2000 after being found floating on a raft with his dead mother. Ariel was kept for a few months in the house of American family members before his father demanded he be returned to Cuba. Ariel was eventually deported based on issues of custody, rather than actual questions of whether or not he qualified for political asylum. Ariel and his family become very close to Mami, who begins to spend all her time in and around their home with her group Madres Para Justicia. 

Jaquelin, from a poor family in Los Angeles, meets Lizet at a required orientation for students of color at Rawlings. Jaquelin is at first sad and lonely—she moves herself in because her mother doesn’t have a green card and can’t fly—but she comes into her own and becomes a role model for Lizet, demonstrating what it looks like to succeed even as a poor, Latina student. 

Ethan is a white, red-haired senior at Rawlings, who is originally from Seattle. He is from a low-income family and bonds with Lizet over shared financial struggle. Ethan and Lizet clearly have a bit of romantic interest, but it never blossoms into anything because of her existing relationship with Omar. Ethan becomes a confidant for Lizet, but she ruins their friendship when she isn’t happy for him about getting a fully funded ride to Berkeley for a doctoral program in history. Later, Lizet tries to reconnect, but Ethan doesn’t take the bait. 

Caridaylis is Ariel’s cousin, a woman between Leidy and Lizet’s age who looks, to Lizet, like a typical Miami girl, the kind of girl who might have gone unnoticed at her high school. Caridaylis is put in the news spotlight when she becomes a surrogate mother to Ariel after his own mother dies on the raft. Caridaylis becomes very close to Mami, waving at her in crowds of reporters and eventually weeping into her shoulder when Ariel is deported. As a character, Caridaylis never actually speaks—instead, she is used as a symbol to depict Mami’s feeling of alienation from her younger daughter and Lizet’s sense of loss at no longer feeling connected to her mother.