Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School

An admittedly privileged perspective of attending boarding school as a Black American student, this is James’s coming-of-age story while enrolled at the elite Taft School in Connecticut. Readers won’t find anecdotes of boarding school scandals, drugs, or partying in its pages, but they will become well acquainted with the cultural and societal growth of a young girl obsessed with role playing, instant messaging, Star Trek, and Dogma, who also happens to be the first Black American legacy student to graduate from Taft School. There is no rage or rebellion in these pages; only sincerity and self-awareness. James admits her own naivete and ignorance of code switching, microaggressions, and respectability politics at the beginning of her time at boarding school, but upon graduation realizes many aspects of the Taft School experience for Black students are questionable, problematic, and oftentimes traumatic. James’s reflection on her time at Taft and career as an admissions counselor reveals both the subtle microaggressions and outright racism toward Black students in a predominantly white school.