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Hope in the Unseen by Ron
Suskind (Author)
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- Paperback: 384 pages ; Dimensions
(in inches): 0.89 x 7.99 x 5.30
- Publisher: Broadway; Reprint
edition (May 4, 1999)
- ISBN: 0767901266
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Book Description
At Ballou Senior High, a
crime-infested school in Washington, D.C., honor students have
learned to keep their heads down. 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 will not swallow his
pride, and 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, a glimpse that turns into a
face-on challenge one year later: acceptance into Brown
University, an Ivy League school.
At Brown, finding himself far
behind most of the other freshmen, 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 either the white
students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds, or the
middle-class blacks.
Having traveled too far to turn
back, Cedric is left to rely on his faith, 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.
From the Publisher
Advance praise for A Hope
in the Unseen:
"This beautiful, poignant, hopeful book tells
the story of an incredible young man and what it's like to grow up
in a world that is completely alien to some Americans, but is
tragically all too familiar to too many children."
--Marian Wright Edelman, President of The Children's Defense Fund
"From the opening scene, A Hope in the
Unseen upended all my preconceptions about life in the inner
city and the Ivy League. It is by turns funny, poignant, and
suspenseful, at the same time inspiring and sobering. [I]t ranks
among the best nonfiction books I have read."
--James B. Stewart, author of Den of Thieves and Blood
Sport
"Ron Suskind takes us on an unforgettable,
peculiarly American journey--a journey which exposes the fault lines
of race and class, and yet gives one reason for hope."
--Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here and
The Other Side of the River
Ron Suskind won the Pulitzer Prize for
feature writing in 1995 for his stories on Cedric Jennings, a
talented black teenager struggling to succeed in one of the worst
public high schools in Washington, D.C. Suskind has expanded those
features into a full-length nonfiction narrative, following Jennings
beyond his high-school graduation to Brown University, and in the
tradition of Leon Dash's Rosa Lee and Alex Kotlowitz's
There Are No Children Here, delivers a compelling story on the
struggles of inner-city life in modern America.
While it appears to have a
happy ending (with Jennings earning a B average in his sophomore
year), A Hope in the Unseen is not without a few caveats (at
times, Jennings feels profoundly alienated from his white peers).
Trite as it may sound to say, this book teaches a lesson about the
virtue of perseverance, and it's definitely worth reading.
--John J. Miller
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