A must read for anyone in the profession of education. Overall, the story deserves a reading by anyone who may be interested in the unknown struggles of our nation, or someone seeking inspiration to apprecciate all we have in our advantaged lives. In addition, I thought this book should be included in the curriculum for high school literature classes and urban studies. Also a great book club selection.
Another SWE book club choice, and another winner. This is the story of how Cedric Jennings, a bright kid from a tough neighborhood in southeast Washington, D.C. not only beat the odds to graduate high school, but went on to graduate from Brown University (and then earn two master's degrees).
The drama of Cedric's odyssey is real, and Suskind's writing pulls you in. I was struck by how tenuous life is for the working poor. Despite the fact that Cedric's mother, Barbara, worked full time, any major upset (broken appliance, for example) is enough to totally upset the family finances. Some of the members of the book group thought she would have done better to not give her last dollar to the church. I thought that the $20 a week that she really couldn't afford, but nonetheless did put into the collection plate, would not have made a real difference given the fact that she wasn't earning a living wage.
Cedric found it difficult to fit in at Brown. From Suskind's description, this was due as much to class as to race. He just didn't have the same frame of reference as kids from middle class backgrounds. We could see some of this in the summer program at MIT, where Bill Ramsay, the director of the program, describes the best kids from poor, urban schools as needing two years of tutoring (not six weeks) to bring them up to a level where they could be accepted at MIT.
One course Cedric took at Brown took him to an inner-city Providence school, and this gives him the chance to look back at himself and where he came from. On looking at the kids in the hallways, Cedric tries to identify someone like himself in the crowd. He reflects in his journal:
The first step is to agree that most people share the goal of true diversity, with many races competing freely and successfully. But everyone wanting the same thing doesn't tell us 'how' - how do we get there? How do we lift often poorly educated minorities to an equal footing in the classroom? How do we do this while respecting that being singled out for special attention - and often being 'tracked' into a lower educational rung - can result in crippling doubts about one's abilities? [337-338]Suskind writes well and manages to be non-judgmental about the many different individuals who were part of Cedric's life. For example, Bishop Long is the leader of the evangelical church that is the cornerstone of Barbara's life. He is at times almost bitter when someone who came to him without hope succeeds in turning their life around and then leaves the church, sometimes bad-mouthing Bishop Long in the bargain. Now Cedric, after a few years at Brown, feels he must break with the church. Bishop Long proves to be a really big man, in the best sense of the word. When Cedric tells him that he feels he has outgrown the church, Long sends him out into the world, tells him to cary God in his heart, and says, "You'll always have a home here."
Suskind certainly can write wonderfully:
He [Cedric] still hears the echo from rutted Southeast Washington and presses through gusts of thankfulness and survivor's guilt to figure out why he escaped when so many - who are so much like him - did not. As he searches and learns more in classes and discussions about the country's immigrant past, the phrase "a hope in the unseen" continues to resonate. That's the thing, he figures, that built the country, that drew often luckless people across oceans to a place they could barely imagine. He knows it is what propelled him from one country to another - even though he is anything but an immigrant, and even though these are anything but hopeful days for most African Americans. Nonetheless, the fact remains; he had hope in a better world he could not yet see that overwhelmed the cries of "you can't" or "you won't" or "why bother." More than anything else, mustering that faith, on cue, is what separated him from his peers, and distinguishes him from so many people in these literal, sophisticated times. It has made all the difference. [364-365]This is a book to read and recommend to others!