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Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School
Contributor(s): James, Kendra (Author)
ISBN: 1538753480     ISBN-13: 9781538753484
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
OUR PRICE:   $26.10  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: January 2022
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - African American & Black
- Biography & Autobiography | Women
- Humor | Topic - School & Education
Dewey: B
LCCN: 2021033014
Physical Information: 1.1" H x 6.2" W x 9.1" (1.10 lbs) 304 pages
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
A sharp-witted and deeply insightful look into the storied world of elite prep schools from the first African-American legacy student to graduate from The Taft School.

Early on in Kendra James' professional life, she began to feel like she was selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for independent prep schools, she persuaded students and families to embark on the same perilous journey she herself had made--to attend cutthroat and largely white schools similar to The Taft School, where she had been the first African-American legacy student only a few years earlier. Her new job forced her to reflect on her own elite education experience, and to realize how disillusioned she had become with America's inequitable system.

In ADMISSIONS, Kendra looks back at the three years she spent at Taft, chronicling clashes with her lily-white roommate, how she had to unlearn the respectability politics she'd been raised with, and the fall-out from a horrifying article in the student newspaper that accused Black and Latinx students of being responsible for segregation of campus. Through these stories, some troubling, others hilarious, she deconstructs the lies and half-truths she herself would later tell as an admissions professional, in addition to the myths about boarding schools perpetuated by popular culture.

With its combination of incisive social critique and uproarious depictions of elite nonsense, ADMISSIONS will resonate with anyone who has ever been The Only One in a room, dealt with racial microaggressions, or even just suffered from an extreme case of homesickness.