A hope in the unseen
Subtitle: an American odyssey from the inner city to the Ivy League
By: Ron Suskind
Edition: Rev. and updated ed.
Publisher: Broadway Books
Published: 2005
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 390
ISBN-13: 9780767901260
Subjects: Knowledge and learning; Brown University; African American teenage boys; African American college students; Frank W. Ballou Senior High School (Washington, D.C.); Students; Education; Childhood and youth; Biography
Description: At Ballou Senior High, a crime-infested school in Washington, D.C., honor students have learned to keep their heads down. Like most inner-city kids, they know that any special attention in a place this dangerous can make you a target of violence. But Cedric Jennings will not swallow his pride, and with unwavering support from his mother, he studies and strives as if his life depends on it--and it does. The summer after his junior year, at a program for minorities at MIT, he gets a fleeting glimpse of life outside, a glimpse that turns into a face-on challenge one year later: acceptance into Brown University, an Ivy League school. At Brown, finding himself far behind most of the other freshmen, Cedric must manage a bewildering array of intellectual and social challenges. Cedric had hoped that at college he would finally find a place to fit in, but he discovers he has little in common with either the white students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds, or the middle-class blacks. Having traveled too far to turn back, Cedric is left to rely on his faith, his intelligence, and his determination to keep alive his hope in the unseen--a future of acceptance and reward that he struggles, each day, to envision.
Table of contents: title: Something to push against; title: Don't let them hurt your children; title: Rise and shine; title: Skin deep; title: To him who endureth; title: Pretender; title: Good-bye to yesterday; title: Fierce intimacies; title: Bill payers on parade; title: Bursting heart; title: Back home; title: Let the colors run; title: Place up ahead; title: Meeting the man.