ADMISSIONS
A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School
By Kendra James

Early in her memoir, “Admissions,” Kendra James describes an off-campus adventure near her new boarding school. The students who accompany her are, like James, Black — among the few Black students at Taft, an elite school that like so many of its kind was built for wealthy white boys. Wandering the Connecticut countryside, James and her friends take a goose egg from a nest. They schedule its care, using dormitory lamps to warm the unhatched gosling, which James names Crookshanks. The egg is moved from lonely desk to lonely desk.