Summary

Between chapters ten and 11, Casey inserts a single-page “interlude” for his college friend, Elijah, who committed suicide a year before Casey wrote his memoir. Casey had a dream in which he encountered Elijah in a crowded diner. “We did a lot of things that we wouldn’t advise anybody we loved to do,” Elijah told Casey before Casey woke up (163).

Chapter 11 begins with Casey’s matriculation at Yale. The incoming freshman were lectured to use their time in college to network. Casey at first attempted to follow the man’s advice but found it impossible to tolerate his classmates’ racist and classist attitudes. Casey struggled to make both friends and sense of overly academic discussions of “blackness”; he could not identify with the writings of James Baldwin. His peers made fun of his southern accent as well as his clothes (as does his...