MONITOR

When Book Burning Is an Act of Racial Terrorism

What happened to Jennine Capó Crucet at Georgia Southern University is not an isolated incident

Anjali Enjeti
ZORA
Published in
4 min readOct 14, 2019

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Jennine Capó Crucet speaks as a guest at the Vulture Festival.
Jennine Capó Crucet. Photo: Cindy Ord/Getty

OnOn Wednesday evening, students at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, burned copies of the novel, Make Your Home Among Strangers by Latinx author and University of Nebraska-Lincoln professor, Jennine Capó Crucet. The book, about a Latinx college student’s experience on a predominantly White campus, was part of the university’s “first-year experience” curriculum at the university. Crucet, who did not immediately respond to comment, had been invited to campus to talk with students about the book.

But during the question and answer session afterward, according to The George-Anne, a few students expressed their disdain for the novel. “I noticed that you made a lot of generalizations about the majority of white people being privileged,” one student said. “What makes you believe that it’s okay to come to a college campus, like this, when we are supposed to be promoting diversity on this campus, which is what we’re taught. I don’t understand what the purpose of this was.”

Afterward, more students took to Twitter to accuse Crucet of “dissing white people” and bigotry. Another, in a tweet that has since been removed…

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ZORA
ZORA

Published in ZORA

A publication from Medium that centers the stories, poetry, essays and thoughts of women of color.

Anjali Enjeti
Anjali Enjeti

Written by Anjali Enjeti

Journalist, critic & columnist at ZORA. Essay collection SOUTHBOUND (UGA Press) & debut novel THE PARTED EARTH (Hub City Press), spring ’21. anjalienjeti.com.

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