Part 3, Waters Summary and Analysis

Angela feels like an outsider while she attends high school in New York, but she has enough activities to handle it. Now Angela is a student at Brandeis University. She comments on the difference: "I searched the crowds of freshmen for others who were Black. Just knowing they were there would have made me feel a little more comfortable. But the full scholarship Brandeis had bestowed upon me was apparently a guilt-motivated attempt to increase their Black freshman population of two. We three were all female. I was glad that one of them, Alice, lived on the same floor as I" (Part 3, p. 118).

Angela feels very alienated that first semester at Brandeis. She doesn't study much. She won't join the small communist movement at the school, even though she labels herself a communist. She avoids the social scene. The...