TY - BOOK AU - Suskind,Ron TI - A hope in the unseen: an American odyssey from the inner city to the Ivy League AV - LC2803.W3 S87 1999eb U1 - 371.8/092B 21 PY - 1999///, c1998 CY - New York PB - Broadway Books KW - Jennings, Cedric Lavar KW - Frank W. Ballou Senior High School (Washington, D.C.) KW - Students KW - Biography KW - Brown University KW - African American teenage boys KW - Education KW - Washington (D.C.) KW - African American college students KW - Electronic books KW - local N1 - Something to push against -- Don't let them hurt your children -- Rise and shine -- Skin deep -- To him who endureth -- Pretender -- Good-bye to yesterday -- Fierce intimacies -- Bill payers on parade -- Bursting heart -- Back home -- Let the colors run -- Place up ahead -- Meeting the man N2 - 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 ER -