Admissions : a memoir of surviving boarding school
James, Kendra2023
Book
Kendra James began her professional life selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for select prep schools, her job was persuading students and families to embark on the same perilous journey, attending cutthroat and largely white schools similar to The Taft School. Forced to reflect on her own elite educational experience, she quickly became disillusioned by America's inequitable system. In Admissions, Kendra looks back at the three years she spent at Taft, from clashes with her lily-white roommate, to unlearning the respectability politics she'd been raised with, and a horrifying article in the student newspaper that accused Black and Latinx students of being responsible for segregation of campus. She contemplates the benefits of the education she got from Taft, which Kendra credits as playing a role in her career success, as well as the ways the school coddled her -- perhaps, she now believes, too much. Through these stories, 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.
Main title:
Admissions : a memoir of surviving boarding school / Kendra James.
Author:
James, Kendra, author
Edition:
First trade edition.
Imprint:
New York : Grand Central, 2023.©2023.
Collation:
xv, 287 pages : map ; 21 cm.
Notes:
Includes "Reading group guide:" pages 285-287.
ISBN:
9781538753507 (paperback)
Dewey class:
371.02092B/JAM
Language:
English
Subject:
James, KendraSchool administrators -- United States -- BiographyWomen school administrators -- United States -- BiographyAfrican American school administrators -- United States -- BiographyPrivate schools -- AdministrationBoarding schoolsMinority students -- RecruitingRacism in education -- United StatesElite (Social sciences) -- Education -- United StatesAutobiographies
BRN:
2054045