Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Lyons Public Library | 921 JEN | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
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.
Author Notes
Ron Suskind is a staff writer for the Wall Street Journal. In 1995, he won the Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing for a two-part series about the high-school years of Cedric Jennings. Suskind and his family live in Washington, D.C.
Reviews (4)
School Library Journal Review
YA-Cedric Jennings is the illegitimate son of an off-and-on drug dealer/ex-con and a hardworking, badly paid mother; it is her single-minded vision to have the boy escape the mean ghetto streets unscathed. Cedric has listened to her and is, as the book opens, an A student at a run-down, dispirited Washington, DC, high school, where he treads a thin line between being tagged a nerd and being beaten by gang leaders. Suskind, a Wall Street Journal reporter, follows the African-American youth through his last two years of high school and freshman year at Brown University. Inspirational sermons at a Pentecostal church, guidance from his mother, a love of black music and singing, and a refuge in the logic of math combine with the young man's determination and faith in the future to keep him focused on his goal of a topflight college education. Despite many low moments and setbacks, Jennings's story is one of triumph within both cultures, black and white, which together and separately put tremendous obstacles in his path out of the inner city. It is a privilege and an inspiration for readers to accompany Cedric on part of his long, difficult journey to maturity. His journey continues at this moment, since he is now a senior at Brown this fall. YAs of any background will be introduced to new worlds here.-Judy McAloon, Potomac Library, Prince William County, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Suskind, a journalist, tells the story of one African-American youth's rise from poverty-stricken Anacostia, in southeast Washington D.C., to the ivied halls of Brown University. In 1995, Suskind won a Pulitzer Prize for two articles he wrote for the Wall Street Journal on Cedric Jennings, an African- American student at one of the poorest schools in the capital, whose studiousness and ambition earn him a place in MIT's summer program for minority youth. Suskind's book expands on that story, extending it to Cedric's admission to Brown University and first year there. Suskind weaves interviews with Cedric, his family, teachers, and friends into a narrative that shows the challenges facing a ghetto youth bent on academic achievement. Paradoxically, both the inner-city code of youthful male behavior and the teachings of the Pentecostal church Cedric attends with his mother conspire to discourage intellectual distinction. The drama of the story is in the mediations Cedric learns to make between the inherited and the chosen, yet ``unseen,'' parts of his life. Suskind plays to the sense of closure and, in this case, a happy ending the very format of a book (unlike a newspaper article) encourages, but cannot really achieve here, since Cedric's life at college, and beyond, is still in process. By the end of the book, the young man has forgiven his high school nemeses, been reconciled with his absent father, and found social acceptance at Brown. Left hanging is the question of the ultimate success of Cedrics quest, which he is still only beginning. One senses the existence of conflicts unresolved and questions unanswered. This engaging success story leaves behind a troubling aftertaste of personal and social wounds that appear to have been too artfully healed. ($50,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Booklist Review
How hard is it for a kid from the toughest high school in southeast Washington, D.C., to bootstrap himself into the Ivy League? Very, very, very hard, as Suskind reported in two Pulitzer Prize^-winning Wall Street Journal feature articles. He followed Cedric Jennings through the graffiti-strewn halls of Frank W. Ballou Senior High (where his academic success drew taunts and threats but also support from key teachers) and into an MIT program intended to help minority teens qualify for admission (where Cedric learned that, despite years of hard work, he knew much less than other kids--even other minority kids). A Hope in the Unseen retells that story and adds the next stage of the journey: rejected as "not MIT material," Cedric applies to other top schools, heads to Brown University, and gradually comes to terms with a world quite different from Ballou High. Suskind has spent years talking with Cedric, his working mother, his in-and-out-of-jail father, the clergyman who helped keep Cedric out of trouble, and students (at Ballou, MIT, and Brown) with a range of opinions about academic work and Cedric's single-mindedness. As readers celebrate one young man's singular persistence, they'll wonder how we can help more inner-city kids share Cedric's lifeline of hope. --Mary Carroll
Library Journal Review
An offshoot of Suskind's Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal articles on students at a crime-ridden Washington, DC, high school, this chronicles the journey of one of those studentsCedric Jenningsout of the ghetto through his first year at Brown. With mesmerizing detail, Suskind weaves Cedric's story: his illegitimacy, his fiercely protective mother, the black Pentecostal church that imbues him with a trust in God, the taunts and threats he suffers at Ballou High because he is a model student, the strangeness he feels at Brown, both culturally and socially, his academic unpreparedness, despite being the best at Ballou, and his survival at Brown against the odds. Suskind uses his reporter's skills brilliantly, portraying Cedric's outer and inner life and making an eloquent though unstated plea for affirmative action. Essential reading that provides some small hope for our social ills. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/1/98; for an interview with the author, see "Tracking the American Dream," p. 102.]Francine Fialkoff, "Library Journal" (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| 1. Something to Push Against | p. 1 |
| 2. Don't Let them Hurt Your Children | p. 24 |
| 3. Rise and Shine | p. 44 |
| 4. Skin Deep | p. 77 |
| 5. To Him Who Endureth | p. 101 |
| 6. The Pretender | p. 140 |
| 7. Good-Bye to Yesterday | p. 159 |
| 8. Fierce Intimacies | p. 189 |
| 9. Bill Payers on Parade | p. 222 |
| 10. A Bursting Heart | p. 237 |
| 11. Back Home | p. 262 |
| 12. Let the Colors Run | p. 281 |
| 13. A Place up Ahead | p. 304 |
| 14. Meeting the Man | p. 334 |
| Epilogue | p. 362 |
| Author's Note | p. 366 |