A Hope in the Unseen; An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
John Foraste (jacket photograph) and L. G. Gallagh New York: Broadway Books, 1998. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. [10], 372, [2] pages. DJ flap has a slight crease.Author's Note. This book is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal series. Ronald Steven "Ron" Suskind (born November 20, 1959) is an American journalist, author, and filmmaker. He was the senior national affairs writer for The Wall Street Journal from 1993 to 2000, where he won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for articles that became the starting point for his first book, A Hope in the Unseen. His other books include The Price of Loyalty, The One Percent Doctrine, The Way of the World, Confidence Men, and his memoir Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism, from which he made an Emmy Award-winning, Academy Award-nominated feature documentary. Suskind has written about the George W. Bush Administration, the Barack Obama Administration, and related issues of the United States' use of power. Cedric Jennings gives back to the community as a clinical social worker and youth minister. The story of his achievements is required reading in many high schools around the country. In 2004, Cedric obtained licensure to practice social work in the District of Columbia. He began his career in child welfare, as a social worker, serving abused and neglected children in the D.C. foster care system. In 2006, Cedric joined the District of Columbia Child and Family Services Agency as an adoption social worker. Cedric worked to ensure the safety and well-being of children through the achievement of permanency with stable and healthy families. The inspiring true story of a ferociously determined young man who, armed only with his intellect and his willpower, fights his way out of despair. At Ballou Senior High, a crime-infested school in Washington, D.C., honor students have learned to keep their heads down. Among the mere handful of students with a B average or better, some plead to have their names left off the "Wall of Honor" bulletin board; others hide during awards ceremonies; only a few dare to raise their hands in class. 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, the lanky son of a jailed drug dealer, will not swallow his pride, though each day he struggles to decide who he wants to be. 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 Ballou--an image that burns in his mind afterward and fills him with a longing to live in such a world. In his senior year, walking a gauntlet of sneers and threats, he achieves a 4.02 grade-point average and then the impossible: acceptance into Brown University, an Ivy League school. At Brown, finding himself far behind most of the other freshmen in his academic training and his knowledge of broader culture, 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 the white students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds and party hard while acing tests. Even the middle-class blacks have trouble understanding Cedric, a straight-arrow church kid from the ghetto who seems like an obvious product of affirmative action. As he struggles to master classwork and think like a scholar, he realizes that faith alone can take him only so far. Having traveled too far to turn back, Cedric is left to rely on 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.
Ron Suskind first wrote about Cedric Jennings in a pair of articles for the Wall Street Journal, which later won the Pulitzer Prize. Now, having spent three years at Cedric's side, Suskind delivers a triumphant coming-of-age odyssey that includes us all. Eye-opening, sometimes humorous, and often deeply moving, A Hope in the Unseen weaves a crucial new thread into the rich and ongoing narrative of the American experience. Condition: Very good / Very good.
Keywords: Cedric Jennings, African-Americans, Minorities, Brown University, Ivy League, Affirmative Action, Ghetto, Social Conditions, Academia, Self-Help, Self-Improvement
ISBN: 0767901258
[Book #85401]
Price: $45.00