Kendra James' debut memoir, “Admissions,' and Bethany Morrow's 'Cherish Farrah' examine Black tokenism through two powerful, very different lenses.
: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School,” begins with a glossary. That choice might seem strange for a contemporary story set in the suburbs of Connecticut — not a place the average American reader would expect to need a translator. But it doubles as an announcement that James is taking us into the kind of clubby, insular culture where familiar-sounding words have been repurposed as a code intelligible only to a privileged few.
“the first Black American legacy student to graduate from The Taft School” since it had first started admitting Black students less than 50 years earlier.During her time as a student, she reacts to that fact with “bitter pride” that eventually becomes “mortification” at being singled out for public discussion.
The book is, not incidentally, an excellent memoir. James is unsparing and hilarious about her adolescent foibles, her outré fashion choices and insistence on telling everyone about her hobby of writing erotic fan fiction. Many former intense young nerds will cringe with loving recognition.Deesha Philyaw talks about the long gestation of her collection ‘The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,’ a Times Book Prize finalist for first fiction.
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