A Hope in the Unseen by Ron Suskind

A Hope in the Unseen follows a young African-American boy as he journeys through his last two years of high school and freshmen year of college. Cedric Jennings comes from a poor, broken family living in a terrible neighborhood in Washington, D.C. His faith in God carries him through tough times and he works incredibly hard to earn good grades in a high school where fewer than 5% will go to college. Cedric works hard enough to get into Brown University. He is overwhelmed at the cultural differences as well as the classwork. But he perseveres to graduate with a 3.3 GPA and go onto graduate school at Harvard.

Cedric’s story is rare in the sense that very few can escape the dire circumstances they are put in. Many would give up and make up excuses. The determination Cedric possesses is something everyone could learn from. Most of us (probably everyone reading this blog) had a better upbringing than Cedric. Yet he was able to accomplish so much with so little.

I have to mention how much race is discussed in the book. One of the challenges Cedric faces is never being around white people growing up. He constantly ponders how whites treat him. Is it because of his skin color? At the same time, he doesn’t want to fall into his previous life of only being surrounded by his own kind. The author does a good job of writing from Cedric’s perspective and the reader really gets a sense of how deep race can affect someone.

Although this book was recommended to me, I really wanted to read it because all incoming students to UMASS were given A Hope in the Unseen at summer orientation and required to read it before they returned for the start of school. (It's the first time I've heard of required summer reading for college.) Then they brought Cedric in as their speaker at Convocation. I wanted to see what made his story so special. After reading the book, I also believe this story would be powerful for younger high school students to read. It could provide some motivation for what they could accomplish if they worked hard enough.

My rating for A Hope in the Unseen: 5 stars out of 5. Get it here!