US universities continue to recruit and engage international students in ways that result in their othering, exclusion, and compromised well-being. As such, scholarship that amplifies the voices of international students attending US colleges is needed. With the increasing attention and push for inclusion and equity work in higher education, it is imperative to account for international students’ experiences within this dialogue and identify policies and practices that will positively contribute to their well-being and success. Using a transnational lens, we interrogate existing systems and offer recommendations to US institutional personnel to better support international student well-being and success. The purpose of this work is twofold: (1) to illuminate how current structures of US higher education systems thwart international students’ well-being and success, and (2) through our analysis of existing literature, to provide recommendations to best support international student well-being and success.

A broad, interracial circle of family, friends, and collaborators animated James Baldwin’s life and work, radically revising the contours of what we understand to be “literary friendship” in the twentieth century. His friendships with others were characterized by a deep generosity of spirit; he often lent his time, money, and boundless energy to the creative and vocational pursuits of his closest friends and was rewarded with similar demonstrations of generosity in return. For Baldwin, friendship was not simply an amicable and reciprocal bond of identification between admirers: if you were a friend of Jimmy’s, you were kin. Growing up the oldest of nine children in 1930s Depression-era Harlem, Baldwin often took care of his brothers and sisters – changing diapers, bathing and taking them on walks through the neighborhood, known by locals as the “Hollow.” Baldwin’s friendship practices therefore mirrored the patient and unending acts of love, duty, and care that were integral to his experience as an eldest brother. In his biography of Baldwin, David Leeming shares a meaningful anecdote that illustrates Baldwin’s unique vision of friendship, where in a debate with a well-known sociologist about the restrictive categorization of the term “sibling,” Baldwin clapped hands on the arms of both his brother David Baldwin and his friend David Leeming and yelled “These are my brothers; not my siblings, motherfucker!” Thus, when Amiri Baraka writes in his eulogy for James Baldwin that “As man he was Our friend, Our older or younger brother,” he does more than speak political rhetoric; he celebrates the powerful forces of adoption that were so central to Baldwin’s life and work.

Situated at the hilltop terminus of the winding and narrow Route des Serres, around twelve miles west from Nice, the village of St.-Paul-de-Vence appears unexpectedly among terraced vineyards, terracotta-tiled farmhouses, and contemporary luxury villas of southeastern Provence. Looking south from the medieval ramparts that encircle the preserved walled village, one sees the verdant hills and sandstone towns that meander down to the azure blue of the Mediterranean; looking north, the Alpes-Maritimes gently crest on the horizon. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, St.-Paul-de-Vence was a frontier battlement, fortified as a strategic military stronghold to defend against Spanish and Italian invasion. Since its founding, it has thus served as an enchanted, yet embattled, refuge for a changing community of inhabitants, and this tradition of refuge was still present for James Baldwin when he arrived there in late 1970 seeking creative, emotional, and physical sanctuary.