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.
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