Colby Magazine, Fall 2002

	A Hope in the Unseen Ron Suskind chronicles a young man's journey of faith, from the inner city to the Ivy League.


	More than Lobster Linda Greenlaw '83 writes about a community of fishermen.

	From our shelf to yours.

By Alicia Nemiccolo MacLeay '97

Nothing you can't do if you set your mind to it," Barbara Jennings advises her son, Cedric, in A Hope in the Unseen. And Cedric Jennings puts his trust in that American ideal--work hard, keep your faith and you'll attain your goals. He refuses to swallow his pride or adopt the shoot-low philosophy of his inner-city, minority peers. He dreams of finally getting somewhere he belongs, even if it's someplace he's never seen.

A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League
by Ron Suskind
Random House/Broadway Books (1998)

Through Jennings's eyes Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind examines race, class, education and achievement in America. This fall A Hope in the Unseen was the first-year book selection for the Class of 2006. Dean of Faculty Ed Yeterian, who oversees the program, said he was drawn to A Hope in the Unseen "because it dealt with general issues of personal identity and the transition to college as well as more specific issues of race and class." After reading the book over the summer, first-year students took part in residence hall discussions led by faculty members during orientation.

The book was enlightening on the different ways diversity is perceived, said Jessica Varnum '06 of Presque Isle, Maine. "Every individual in a community brings with him or her a set of predefined ideas concerning identity and diversity."

For Jennings, identity is based on character, not something that simply sets you apart, like race.

Suskind's nonfiction narrative follows Jennings from his junior year at impoverished, crime-ridden Ballou Senior High School in Washington, D.C., to the bewildering--and in some ways more threatening--landscape of Brown University.

On the surface Jennings might seem an urban statistic. He's the child of an unwed single mother and an uninvolved, incarcerated drug dealer. He knows to fill up on lunch at school the week the rent money is due and to avoid the bus stops frequented by gangs. But instead of accepting this life as his lot, Jennings fights off the "dreambusters" around him. ("Their favorite lines are 'you cannot' or 'you will not,'" he says.) With grit, vision and his mother's faith in him and in Jesus, Jennings succeeds in a school where being an academic standout is not only socially unacceptable but dangerous.

Jennings's first glimpse of life outside his community comes at an MIT summer program for minorities before his senior year. But he can't relate to the self-assured, middle- and upper-middle class black and Hispanic kids around him. He learns "to be reserved, for fear of slipping into a mispronunciation or some embarrassing parochialism," and despite continuous studying he struggles to keep pace academically.

"It just seems like there's no way to give kids like that credit for the distance they've already traveled," the program's director says. "This Cedric had to run three more laps than the other kids, but he'll still be two laps behind, so he loses."

Despite raising his grades through sheer determination, Jennings is told he's not MIT material. "The thing is, I can work harder than other people," appeals Jennings. "When I really set my mind to something, anything, I can get there. It's about wanting it more in your heart."

That perspective, that belief, Cedric, is admirable, but it also can set you up for disappointment," says the professor. "And, at the present time, it just doesn't seem to be enough."

Even at MIT there are dreambusters.

But, Jennings proves this one wrong, too, by getting accepted at Brown. He must now learn to decipher unfamiliar intellectual and cultural codes in the dorm (what is his roommate talking about when he refers to "birding?") and in the classroom (who are Churchill and Freud?). Jennings wants to be just another guy, but feels alienated by class, race and his spiritual faith.

The self-imposed system of strict boundaries and isolation that got Jennings to Brown no longer works. To survive here he must learn to negotiate a truce between fitting in and being himself.

A Hope in the Unseen provides an inspiring lesson about sacrifice, perseverance and dreams while admonishing an unfair education system. Suskind's work is as much about how so many American children are set up to fail before the race even starts as it is about the success of one extraordinary individual.

For first-year students, the book provided insights into the different ways their classmates will perceive Colby's academic and residential environment and the ways in which their diverse backgrounds will color their experiences on Mayflower Hill.

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