“It’s hard to know what the Booker means in America. Americans aren’t eligible. Does that make them lose interest, or does it give the prize a mystique?” Alan Hollinghurst wondered aloud during an interview last week in his office at 185 Nassau.
For the last six months, people have been warning me about October. A few weeks after I received my acceptance e-mail from Teach for America, a man from the staff called me to discuss the school where I would teach in the fall.
Greenville, Mississippi looks like a town that the Civil Rights movement forgot. Four decades after the Freedom Summer, this “Queen City of the Delta” still has two of just about everything: two McDonalds, two Catholic churches, two sides of town. There are two Kroger grocery stores. The one with the organic milk and fancy cheeses is called the “white Kroger.” The one with the wilted produce and meager selection is called the “black Kroger.”
Early one morning in mid-October, while most of his classmates were sleeping off hangovers or late night study sessions, Zack Woolfe sat in front of his computer, eagerly pressing his internet browser’s “Refresh” button. The Princeton University senior was up … Read More
Every Princeton senior experiences the same dilemma when searching for a post-graduation: to go to Wall Street or not to go to Wall Street. The lure of a New York finance job is difficult to resist, with its high salary … Read More
My students keep asking me why I am here. It is a good question. I am an anomaly at Greenville-Weston High School. I am white in a school where most teachers, and nearly all students, are black. My race fascinated my tenth graders for the first few days of school. One student asked if I found the term “white” offensive, and if I would prefer that he refer to me as “Caucasian.” Several students asked to touch my hair.