I was really new to the cultural criticism space, especially coming at it from a very specific Black woman’s perspective. Prior to that, I had actually been writing at Racialiscious, reporting on the intersection between race and pop culture. I had been writing pieces about my experience at Taft for a website called The Toast. When did you know that it was time to start writing the book?

Bitch spoke with James about the pressures of being a legacy student and the responsibility of preparing Black children for in-school discrimination.Īdmissions comes more than 15 years after you graduated from The Taft School. James says her book isn’t the voice for every Black student who’s attended an elite boarding school, but it opens a dialogue. Peppered with unflinching humor and candor, Admissions dares readers to confront their involvement in academia, especially those who overlook America’s inequitable education system. Early in the book, she even witnesses an evident gesture of disregard: Her father, a first-generation Taft graduate, encounters one of his former white classmates who neglects to call him “sir.”Īdmissions chronicles James’ experience of isolation, but it also captures a glimpse into her close-knit Black and Latinx crew, with white allies she dubbed “misfits.” There’s her best friend, Yara, a queer athlete who shares in James’ fascination with DC Comics and Star Trek, and Callister, who forgoes high-school recklessness because of her religious upbringing.

Attending The Taft School, a 130-year-old elite coeducational institution that boasted integration and inclusion, James was subject to racial microaggressions from students and faculty alike. In Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School, author and journalist Kendra James reflects on her three-year sojourn into a private boarding school where Black students are all but socially accepted.

Kendra james book