During this time period, she spent her weekends giving presentations to hundreds of families of scholarship hopefuls, explaining to them why they could provide what amounted to “golden tickets out of the New York City public school system” to a limited number of students. In the prologue of Admissions, we are given something of a “flash-forward” to a three-year period during which James was working as an admissions officer for the Scholars Striving 4 Success program, which only accepted applicants who were children of color. Much of this is her sharp and witty tone, but it’s also thanks to her willingness to be perfectly honest about not only her experiences, but also about herself at the time that she was going through them.
James has a singular and engaging voice, and she swiftly pulls the reader in and then refuses to let them go. A Page-Turning Confessionalįirst and foremost, once I had begun reading Admissions, I found it nearly impossible to put down, tearing through it over the course of a weekend.
In a memoir filled with anecdotes you have to read to believe, James details her journey from admissions officer to boarding school skeptic, demonstrating deeply entrenched systemic racism and dispensing an impressive number of pop culture references as she does so. Early on in Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding Schoolby Kendra James, the author recalls her experiences as one of a handful of Black students at a mostly-white, extremely privileged boarding school.
0 kommentar(er)
