As you may be aware, the Maryland Humanities Council’s Center for the Book has launched an initiative called “One Maryland One Book,” a statewide community reading program. What this means is that Marylanders of every age, ethnicity, gender, and background are being encouraged to read the book A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League by Ron Suskind. This book tells the story of Cedric Jennings, who went from one of Washington DC's poorest neighborhoods (and its most neglected school) to success at Brown University, one of the most storied institutions in the nation. It is ultimately a tale of inspiration, since there are many roadblocks and obstacles along the way for Cedric.
Of particular interest to this discussion is the prevalent attitude among his peers that academic success is somehow a betrayal of his race and his community. In one early scene, Cedric literally hides as the student body is called to assembly because he knows that there will be payback for his being honored as an outstanding student. And Suskind tells of how administrators try to trick the kids into being recognized for academic achievement. The kids fear reprisals, and the administrators know this, but they also need some symbols of hope and possibility in an otherwise bleak and forsaken place.
What we would like is for all of you, Marylanders and also out-of-staters who happened upon this blog, to, of course, read the book. But we also encourage you to post your impressions of the book on these pages, and to tell us about your own school days. You might also tell us what success, especially in an academic sense, means to you.
Is Cedric "acting white" to get ahead in the world? What does racial authenticity mean to you? And what of re-segregation? Cedric attends a nearly all black school. Are things different in a more diverse student body, or are the African American students still very much marginalized? The Banneker-Douglass Museum will be hosting two events (see our Calendar of Events--September) in conjunction with the initiative. The book is available at local bookstores, and at your neighborhood library. We look forward to hearing from you.
--Joni Jones, Librarian-Archivist, SGGL
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I was lucky enough to have been able to attend the launch party for One Maryland One Book at the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore, and am very excited at the prospect of a community of readers sharing their thoughts and impressions. I also like the idea of this blog, because not all people will be able to attend one of the events associated with the initiative.
I have not finished the book, but I think that I have read enough of it to comment upon the stark contrast between the experience I had in high school and the one lived by Cedric Jennings. I went to Gonzaga College High School in Northwest Washington DC, which means that I went to school in the same city as Cedric Jennings. But where Mr. Suskind writes in A Hope in the Unseen of school administrators offering cash incentives to students who did well in their classes (so long as they agreed to receive the money at an awards assembly), students at Gonzaga were always expected to perform well. And where the vast majority of the students at Ballou (Cedric Jennings’ school) are written off as lost causes, I was always given every opportunity to succeed. The fact that I didn’t do so, and thus spent my senior year at a public school in suburban Montgomery County, says far more about me than it does of Gonzaga.
Still, despite my spending more time out of the classroom than in it, I was able to go to college, and am a graduate of the University of Maryland in College Park. And this makes me wonder. What would have happened had I been at Ballou? Perhaps I would have realized that I needed to take my studies more seriously, but this didn’t happen in my case until I was already in college. I did represent the university as an exchange student in Sheffield, England, and I did receive consistent honors, but I was allowed to make mistakes as a teen and still recover from them and blossom as a student. Not so, as we’ve seen, the students at Ballou.
I am a white man who had a solidly middle class upbringing (if on the low end of that spectrum), so I am a stranger in Cedric Jennings’ neighborhood. And I don’t know if the opportunity I was extended owes more to class or ethnicity. But I do know that though the most exceptional students were taunted and teased even at Gonzaga, it never rose to the level it does in A Hope in the Unseen. Cash wasn’t offered, and students didn’t duck assemblies. And those students who simply wouldn’t work? They were still given chances time after time after time after time.
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