Ep. 199 A Tapestry of Microaggressions with Kendra James

Written By Megan Caballero

Today we're joined by Kendra James; writer, podcast producer, editor, to discuss her debut book, Admissions: A Memoir of Surviving Boarding School. We talk about Kendra's experiences as the first African American legacy student at the Taft School in Connecticut, the ways she came to terms with the racism she experienced, and who she is writing for. We also talk pettiness, writing in the bathroom, and figure skating.

There are spoilers in this episode.

The Stacks Book Club selection for December is Passing by Nella Larsen. We will discuss the book on January 26th with Cree Myles.

 
 

Everything we talk about on today’s episode can be found below in the show notes and on Bookshop.org and Amazon

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TRANSCRIPT
*Due to the nature of podcast advertising, these timestamps are not 100% accurate and will vary.

Traci Thomas 0:08
Welcome to The Stacks, a podcast about books and the people who read them. I’m your host Traci Thomas and our guest today is Kendra James. Kendra is a woman who has worn so many hats. She was a founding editor at shondaland.com. She is a writer, a Podcast Producer and the author of the brand new book Admissions: A Memoir of surviving boarding school. We talked today about the minor traumas of racism, writing in the bathroom and figure skating. Yes, I know this is a very fun episode. Our January book club pick is Passing by Nella Larsen. We will be discussing the book on Wednesday, January 26. With Cree Myles. Okay, let’s talk with Kendra James.

All right, everyone, I am thrilled. Today I am joined by Kendra James. She is the author of Admissions: A Memoir of surviving boarding school. Kendra, welcome to the Stacks.

Kendra James 1:49
Hi, thank you for having me.

Traci Thomas 1:51
I’m really excited. You have a lot of other jobs and titles, which we can talk about later. But I was giving them like the most book focused moment so that all of your people at Grand Central publishing don’t scream at me. Like you are like a multi hyphenate human.

Kendra James 2:08
No, that’s fine. It’s fine.

Traci Thomas 2:10
We’ll get there. We’ll get there. We also this is like I just remembered because I just finished your book, but I feel like it’s your birthday soon.

Kendra James 2:17
Yeah, yeah, my birthday. So the book happens to come out on my birthday. I’m sure how I feel that yeah, we’re gonna see how it goes. We’re gonna see if this ends up being the last time I ever want to celebrate my birthday.

Traci Thomas 2:29
Oh my god, it’s gonna go so great. That’s such a good omen. I love this for you.

Kendra James 2:33
Yeah, it’s that MLK birthday and nice like alignment on it.

Traci Thomas 2:37
Do you have the long weekend birthday moment? Yeah, this is great. So you’re going from a long weekend into your pub day to like publicity craziness. And then this episode will air the day after your birthday. So people listening now you now you know when Kendra’s birthday is it’s the eighth team.

Kendra James 2:53
Pure top record, just a pure string of Caprica.

Traci Thomas 2:56
I love my dad was a Capricorn and both of I have twins and their Capricorns Oh, December my kids are the first day of Capricorn. Ooh, December Capricorns. Tricky. I don’t know what any of it means. Apparently, you guys are stubborn and hardworking. That’s what I know.

Kendra James 3:10
Yeah, that’s like the that is the good basis to start.

Traci Thomas 3:14
I’m getting that sense. Okay. Let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about you. 30 seconds or less? Or so. Can you tell us about the book?

Kendra James 3:21
Yes. Admissions is a memoir of the three years that I spent at a New England boarding school, the task school in Connecticut. Why is that unique? Because I was a black kid out of boarding school, I was the first African American legacy to graduate from Taft. And then I kind of immediately went into working in independent schools when I graduated from college, which was not the plan, but it’s what happened. And it caused me to do a lot of reflecting, especially once we entered the Trump years, actually, even like during the Tea Party years, I just started doing like a lot of reflecting as to like, what it meant that I had gone to one of these schools what it meant that I was now recruiting for one of these schools, and it eventually all culminated in this memoir.

Traci Thomas 4:06
Okay. I have so many questions about boarding school prep school life, which I’m going to sort of avoid, because a lot of that’s in the book, but I just want you to know that the cover of the book is perfection. That’s a real picture of you.

Kendra James 4:27
So the cover of my book is actually our senior photo, our senior class photo, which is taken at the end. I don’t know what they do now. But back when I was there, you would have a senior dinner at the headmaster’s house like three actually. And we don’t use the term headmaster anymore. We use Head of School. Yeah, yep. Some 20s. So yeah, we would have dinner at the head of schools house about three nights before graduation and they would gather us all for that picture, which we could then purchase for like $40 or so. And so yeah, that is the picture And everyone’s faces are blocked off. But you can still really kind of tell. My face is uncovered. And I’m sitting next to one of the girls who’s actually in the book. Callister is on one side. And another girl is next to me. And she was actually a, we used to call them a PG, a postgrad. And so she was another black girl, but she was only there for one year, my senior year. So I actually didn’t really know her that well. But there’s three of us in that picture. And then there were, I believe, 10 of us total, like 10 black kids total. In my year, there were six girls and four boys, and the rest of them are scattered throughout the rest of the picture.

Traci Thomas 5:38
Oh my god. Okay. So you go to the school, you are legacy. So your dad went there, you’re going in, you’re sort of like, okay, you know, you mentioned in the beginning of the book, the woman who’s doing your hair, when you say are going to boarding school is like, Oh, why did you do like thinking that you got like kicked out of school or something. But that’s not the kind of boarding school, you’re going to you’re going to like fancy pants. You know, I think you said Roger Ailes, this kid ended up going there like this, like, at school. When did it dawn on you? either in school or after school that like, you’re in a place that is remarkable. And perhaps not in the ways that the school thinks but it’s remarkable.

Kendra James 6:23
Oh God see that that’s actually really interesting. Because I knew, like, I knew from the jump that I was going to a place that was like, very, like, out of the ordinary. I was a figure skater like, I’ve been a figure skater since I was like eight. And I was suddenly going to a school that had two ice rinks on the campus.

Traci Thomas 6:43
Which is insane. When I read the book, I was like, Skating, skating. What is she talking? Is this a metaphor? Like what? And then you’re like, oh, she means skating on ice.

Kendra James 6:54
Yeah like there are two full size ice rinks sitting on the campus. One was built, I believe, like by hand, or in part by hand by the students in the 30s. And then the the other one is like this sort of brand new or new ish, like, state of the art Olympic rink. Anyway, so I knew that like things were weird. And this was like, not normal. I didn’t really I feel like take the time to reflect about the other ways in which it wasn’t normal, until I left Taft. And like, immediately, when I got to Oberlin, where I went to college, like that was kind of like when things really started becoming clear, you’d like talk about this in the book a lot, where when I was growing up in this town, Maplewood, New Jersey, very diverse, like very much like you played on the street until the lights came on. And like my friends, and I wandered all over the place, and really close knit group of friends there, it was really easy for me to make friends with, like, whoever the hell I wanted to. And that same thing happened almost instantly when I got to Overland. Like I sat down with a group of people I remember at like freshman orientation the first night in the dorm, and was just like, instantly, like, Oh, these people are my best friends. And like still to this day, like, the people that I talked to you that night are like two of my best friends in the world. It was just so much easier. And I felt so much more relaxed and so much myself on that more myself on that campus. Like even just like being able to talk about my interests without like, having to couch it in like, Oh, I know, this is weird, but it just instantly I like came back to being myself. And so that’s like, really when I started to know that like, I didn’t know exactly what about tax had been off putting and like, or not off putting, but what about it had been outside of the ordinary or unusual. But I recognized a change instantly.

Traci Thomas 8:43
Right? One of the things you talk about in the book a lot, obviously is about being black. And like the microaggressions. Or, you know, other ways to say that less kind is the racism, both small and large. And you have this line, I think that’s like microaggressions are the tapestry of racism at Taft. And I just I’m and I love that and you and later in the book, you talk about sort of the minor trauma being something that you have to sacrifice in order to achieve the dream, in this case, the dream that your parents have for you. But also, I think more broadly, the dream of being American. It’s sort of what Tallahassee Coates talks about in his book, like the dream, it’s the same thing. But I’m just thinking as someone who is also black, who were about two years apart. And I also don’t remember understanding racism as racism at that age. And like when I reflect back on so many of the things that people said, and you know, about my hair, or my skin or whatever, whatever it was, you know, you have this scene where they’re talking about adopting African American babies from Africa and like, do they know that those are those average again, maybe. But, you know, don’t mind me, but you have like all these little moments that come up throughout the book, and I’m just wondering and like, as you’re thinking back on all of this, when did it click for you that that was in fact, racism and not just like how people talk like that you couldn’t justify it away.

Kendra James 10:13
You’re I know exactly like what it was. So I again, I was at Oberlin, and I would have this habit of like, I would tell stories about Taft and like, sort of like this very purposefully, like funny way, like, stories about like, some really, like, disturbing shit. Like I would, for instance, there’s a story in my book about this kid who like, kind of, like stalked me for a while.

Traci Thomas 10:34
Sorry, what fucked me up. I was like, holy shit. This is like exactly what it used to be like, on the internet.

Kendra James 10:41
Yes, And he like, and he was a kid, he was a classmate is that I mean, he was older than me, but he was a classmate on campus. And he was just like, essentially stalking me. And so I would tell stories like this to my college friends, and be like, Haha, isn’t that funny? And the reaction that I would get from my friends would be like, What the fuck are you talking about? That’s not normal. That is not a normal thing to experience at a school, especially not at a school that cost $40,000 a year. And so that like that really helped me start, it didn’t happen immediately. It was not like an instant switch. But that is definitely part of how I started reframing a lot of what happened. And I remember telling some friends, too, about like this. One of the other things I talked about in the book, which is like this article that this girl wrote, and it was a really racist article in the school paper, basically accusing black kids of self segregating themselves and like not wanting to make friends with white kids and making white kids deeply uncomfortable on campus with all of these events that we got thrown thrown for us and using quote, right, but yeah, I would tell my friends about that stuff. And they thought it was so odd. And so outside of the ordinary, and that really helped me start rethinking that and like taking, like comparative American Studies, courses, essentially, like just getting a broader educational lens, like really helped me start rethinking some of these things.

Traci Thomas 12:06
One of the things that’s very cool about you, and for me, as someone who talks to writers is like, it’s very clear, clear in your book that you were always a writer, you did like fanfiction II things like you talk about writing a lot. And so I’m wondering, at what point you realize, like, this is something that I want to write about. And then from there, because you wrote articles, this is something that I actually want to turn into a full length book, like, how did that come to you?

Kendra James 12:31
Um gosh, I used to write for a site called racial issues. And we did cultural criticism where like, pop culture intersected with race. And every so often, I would like sort of sprinkle in some boarding school stuff, and like where I had gone to school, but honestly, at that point, I was a little self conscious about it. Because I was new to riding I was new to riding in, like the race and pop culture space. And there was, I think, a part of me that really felt like having gone to a boarding school, like a place that was so traditionally white kind of lowered my like street cred in terms of writing a little bit. And so I really, like I pulled away from it a bit. But then grew, a girl wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal, complaining about not getting into the colleges that she wanted to get into. And it was basically like an evergreen article. Yes, yeah, I think we got Yeah, we got to wait years. And she was she was complaining about affirmative action and saying that, like, basically. And she blamed a lot on indigenous people, I remember, indigenous people were like a big part of her anger. And so after that, I wrote a piece in response to her, where I actually spoke about sort of the entitlement that I felt coming out of a place like Taft and going through the college process, they really kind of do put this like expectation on you at a school like that, that you are going to go to an Ivy, you’re gonna go to a little Ivy, or you’re gonna go to one of the Seven Sisters. Like, places that with that name recognition. And you kind of whether it’s direct or not, you absorb that into a place where it does sort of become like entitlement, like you feel like you should be able to go there. And because I was a legacy at Taft, my dad, he had gone to brown. And so I applied to Brown and I was very, like, very sure I was getting into Brown. And I didn’t get into Brown, I had a like minor meltdown over it. And I felt like I deserved to be there and I didn’t understand like what they were thinking. And so point being I like wrote about all of that emotion and sort of like deconstructing it and what I have learned since then about a the admissions process and be like, what deserve really means. And that was the first time that I really wrote a lot about my boarding school experience. And from there, it became a little bit easier to open up more about it as time went on, and I think, I think when I knew I was going to turn it into a book was after my 10 year reunion, where I went up. And well, a little bit after my five year reunion, which I was there for, like two hours got overwhelmed, and then left before any of the evening celebrations, and I went into a bridesmaids one and a half times, and then like cried over a meal at TGI Fridays, before getting a lot of piercings. So that tells you how bad experience was.

Traci Thomas 15:27
Was a super chill day, you had a great time, right? Really relaxed.

Kendra James 15:30
Yeah But after my, after my 10 year reunion, I had this like experience where I was talking to classmates who didn’t realize that a friend, like a black kid who had been very, like very much a part of our friend group of black and Latinx students, he had passed away. And it was like a really bad passing away, like he had threatened a friend with a firearm and then turned it on himself and the cops were called. So it was a very bad situation. But it had made like the news and like people knew about it to some extent. But none of the white kids that I talked to, at that reunion knew he had passed away. And there was just like something about that, that really kind of like, clutched at me, and really, like, re emphasize the fact to me that like a lot of these stories, the stories of black kids and brown kids at the schools like not only aren’t told, but also just sometimes really feel forgotten by their other classmates. And so that just like, really sort of got me moving in the direction of wanting to make this into a full, a fully thought out piece of writing.

Traci Thomas 16:41
And thinking about sort of like this almost coming as like a response, in some ways to writing this book coming as almost as a response, in some ways to the students that you saw at the reunions, and to that experience and being back on the campus. How did you think about the audience for this book? Who were you writing to communicate with? Like, who are you talking to?

Kendra James 17:03
That took a long time to figure out because my background, so my background in writing, like I write online, and I write usually in like 1200 to like 2500 word chunks, that’s like usually an article length. And so you have to do like so much information, cramming into that space, and like, sometimes like weighing things out for people in a very, a plus b equals c method. And so when I started writing, I was doing a lot of that. And my editor asked me the same question. And she really helped me realize that I did not have to write this, for I did not have to explain racism to people. And I didn’t have to really delve into I guess, like, what makes racism tick, kind of, I could really just write about my experiences, and what happened and what I have learned since then, rather than going into like the whole history, behind anything. And so that really helped me unlock the fact that like, this book, while it cannot speak to the experience of every of every black student, or every like black girl, even on a campus, because as I talk about, like, I come from, like even some, in some ways, like a more privileged background than a lot of my classmates at the time, I hope that it can speak to something in every black experience on a campus. And that’s like really who I’m writing it for. I’m writing it for the students who have been there, and I’m very much writing it for the students who are still there. Now, not just a task, but it all of the schools. The book changed a lot after June of 20. Sure. Because you started earlier, yes, I started writing this in like December of 2019. So this was a pandemic book. And things really changed after that June, when a lot of schools, these sort of accounts on Instagram started popping up called Black at with the name of a school at the end of them. And I was scrolling through them at like, so many schools, and all the stories were the same. And they would put the class year of whoever submitted at the bottom of the cards. And the stories were going back as far back as like the 70s. And then there were stories from like, 2019. And at that point, I was like, oh, okay, so I really am still writing this, to in some ways address a problem that fully has not changed in the 14 year and the 16 years since I left,

Traci Thomas 19:28
And you you talk about in the book, like this idea of responsibility, and not sort of partially being like why you have stayed connected to the school tapped specifically in this in this case, as opposed to like the admissions thing that you’re doing. I’m wondering like, do you feel like your presence has made a difference? Do you feel like the school is accountable to you and obviously not just you, or do you feel like it’s something that like you’re that you are Holding on to hope for like, I just I’m really curious about that about like that responsibility aspect and like your presence being connected to that.

Kendra James 20:09
I wouldn’t say that they’re, they I don’t feel they are responsible to me, or beholden to me in any way. And I, I think that their process is really still ongoing. And I think that June of 2020, I’m sort of peel back the foil on some things that were like, really still, like fucked up there. And like I said, like, it really struck me that a lot of the stories were just still the same stuff that I had been dealing with from 2003 to 2006. Even that article that I mentioned, that the girl wrote in the school paper, my like, one of my big complaints about that, and I write about in the book is that the school paper has a a faculty advisor. So like an adult should have read that before it was printed and been like, Oh, dear, we have to do something about this. And in 20, I believe it was January of 2017. And soon after the school paper did vanish from the internet, you can’t get it anymore online. But there was an article. I can’t remember the headline on it. But the content was the same. It was just another it was yet another article, blaming black students for self segregating and saying that that makes white students uncomfortable on campus and like, all of this stuff. So yeah, it’s a cycle, I really think of these experiences at these independent schools as cycles. Because what happens is they get publicly outed like with the Instagram stuff, which is the biggest outing that any of them who’ve ever had have had at this point, right? In terms of race, I wouldn’t say. And once that comes out, they do something, and then it kind of dies down until the next big thing happens. Right?

Traci Thomas 21:53
I mean, it’s like a microcosm of the rest of the country. Place. You know, everybody was like, super into accountability and etc, etc. And here we are. Yeah. We got an at home test. Joe. Can we get a day off work? Like what’s going on? Oh, we’re just dying. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. We did it in 2020. We’re good. Okay. I want to talk about your petty revenge, miss, because I live for this. Okay, I can relate listeners of this show. Know that I am petty. I am competitive. I love a revenge moment. I also love a detailed note taking moment. So I need you just just a little teaser from the book. Can you talk about your instant AOL Instant Messaging situation?

Kendra James 22:46
Because when I read this, I gasped, I was taken aback. I was blown away. And I was fucking impressed to be quite honest. So please let let people know what you did. And then I have a real question that follows that totally, ya know, as a result of like, some like pretty specific trauma, which I be can spoil. I won’t spoil now. But maybe if it comes up later, but like, yeah, as, as a result of some pretty specific trauma that happened in my sophomore year, I had already been a journaler. I loved Live Journal director and all of that stuff. But I was not very consistent with it. It wasn’t an everyday thing. After that happened after like, what happened in my sophomore year happened, it became an everyday thing. So I was like, chronicling my life down to the last detail. And in addition to that, I basically every time I had an ame conversation, which was I mean, like any millennial, a lot, I would save it. And at first the process was I saved it to a floppy disk. If your listeners know what those are.

Traci Thomas 23:53
I do, I’m old days.

Kendra James 23:55
I would say that to a floppy disk. And I would save them by people screen names. So I had a full record of every conversation that I was having with anyone on a daily basis. And then I would print them out. And I would put them into binders also separated by tabs. So I had a full record of everyone that I had spoken to. And then about like a year into doing that, like sometime in my junior like my late junior or early senior year, I actually from like someone on Live Journal helped me like code a thing that just did it automatically. So every aim conversation that I have just saved automatically onto my computer, which is actually how, for that stalking story that I mentioned earlier, I had actually kind of forgotten about that. And we needed something to like fill in art my second year because sort of the two big events are happening in my sophomore and my senior year. We needed something for junior year and I was scrolling back through my aim conversations. And suddenly I remembered William. Oh. So those conversations are actually printed. For Batum in the book because I have them all.

Traci Thomas 25:04
Okay, so now here’s my serious follow up question. Were you at all shocked, surprised? confused or anything when you went back and read, like your contemporaneous notes of like who you were like, like, holy shit, Kevin trout like, Who is this freak on your screen name?

Kendra James 25:24
Yes. No, I had like, especially like my journal entries like you can the I talk a lot about this but like the respectability politics were like, there they were, they’re hardcore. And I was like, even as I was, like, friends with people and like settling in, like I was judging people just like, left and right, like really based on a lot of the standards that my my parents had given me. So that is like that, for me was like the hardest thing to look at going back. And even just like, this one, like one girl who like I had a good reason to not like but like just some of the things that I called her were like, very big. And the thing is, like, they weren’t actually societally considered that bad in 2004 2005. And now it’s like, oh, no, that is not language we should be using. But, ya know, stuff like that was like, definitely, definitely present. And then like, I just like a less serious note, like, God, I used to squeeze so much, there’s a lot of squeeze, when a squeeze like SQ UE that was like a big fan GM, like, you wouldn’t wake someone with like, I don’t know, show you a hot picture of like Orlando Bloom or something. And you and you went, that would be the response, like squee!

Traci Thomas 26:42
I’ve literally never heard that. So we have a lot in common you and I but the one place we differ is like the Sci Fi that stuff. That’s where I was like, it’s interesting that I have no idea what she’s talking about. But the other like big thing I do want to touch on a little bit is like, what I really appreciated about the book is that while of course you bring up like the major traumas of like, culturally, for black people like these, like large ones, like Alma do, Dr. Lu, like you talked about Trayvon Martin, you talk about, like these big moments, you are also talking a lot about like this minor trauma, and what you experienced, and I feel like, you know, one of the things that I think did come out of 2020 was like people realizing that those like minor traumas or like micro aggressions, again, just like smaller doses of racism, are actually super harmful. I’m, like, damaging. And while you know, it’s not being shot by a police officer that like there is racism in between being assassinated by a police officer. And, you know, being the thing that happens to you sophomore year, we’re not going to tell you guys what it is you have to read the book. I don’t know, I’m acting like it’s like this huge spoiler. It’s just it’s the event. It’s a large event in software. But that there is like this huge difference. And I’m wondering like for you, as you’re writing this book, were you ever insecure about talking about that or feeling like the things that you experienced, like weren’t enough? Or like weren’t worthy of this conversation? Or did you feel comfortable and competent, knowing that, like, you weren’t alone in that, and that it needed to be aired out as well?

Kendra James 28:22
Oh, absolutely. Like I was very insecure, like talking about like that stuff. Mostly because like, as I said before, for me, it’s like, reframing a lot of it, because when I would talk about this stuff, again, in college, like I always did it with like a humorous, bent to be like, that was like, it was nothing like it happened, but we got through it, and we don’t need to know. So to like, finally actually have to do introspective work on it was very difficult. And I was I was in, I was in therapy, through the point of like, writing the proposal and like selling the book, and then the pandemic happened. And I was not in therapy. And so I actually wrote, I actually wrote a lot of the book while not in therapy, and then, um, picked it back up. Once I was like, comfortable. I was like, Oh, I guess video therapy is not going anywhere. I have to get used to it. And so I started going back and doing more work on sort of processing a lot of it. Also, while I was still writing, which really helped, really helped, like me become more secure and talking about some of the smaller stuff because I there’s that complex there where you’re where you’re like, is this like really important to bring up when you have all of this other stuff going on, not just in the larger world, but like even bigger things happening at the schools like more important stuff than complaining about like an article in the paper. But I’ve come to terms with the fact that like, those things are so important because when it comes down to it like you’re, you’re somewhere between the age of 13 and 18 Right when any of this is happening And you’re living for the most part, unless you’re a gay student you’re living away from home with without your parents, and often times perhaps without a surrogate parent of color, or you’re forced on a surrogate parent of color who like, maybe you don’t mesh with because we don’t all mesh together. So it’s like, Who are you leaning on for support in these situations? And so that really also amplifies the impact that even the smaller stuff can have?

Traci Thomas 30:28
Yeah, well, I’m glad you did. Because I feel like so much, it’s easy to write off so much as like, Oh, this is an extreme thing. But like, so much of what happened to you, and your book was, like, felt so you know, regular, not that your regular but like, these events felt like so normal, like, I could imagine them having happened to me, or they did happen to me in some version. And so I really appreciated that, because I think so much focus is on like, these huge, you know, huge systemic moments of racism and huge is not and people are like, Oh, it’s not about the individual. And it’s not about the individual. But here’s some ways that individuals are being fucking racist to teenager.

Like, just these are some really great examples of just like racism popping out.

Kendra James 31:14
Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you mentioned the adoption conversation. And that’s one that like, I always come back to where like, I didn’t really know what to do in the moment, because it was just, it was just happening. And it was, it’s an insane story.

Yeah, it’s insane.

But like, in some ways, that’s like the other angle that I definitely tried to keep in mind while I was writing this, while I don’t necessarily excuse the behavior of a lot of the white kids that I went to school with, I also did try to keep in mind throughout this whole process, that they were also 13 to 18. And that they were coming from backgrounds very often where like, we were the even though there were only 10 of us in our class, like we were still the most black kids that they were hanging around with. And so, honestly, like, for a girl who was growing up on the Upper East Side, which one of the girls in that that story was of New York City? Like? She probably it’s very possible that she did only know, black kids who had been adopted by white parents from other countries. It’s deeply possible that that is the only reference point she had. That doesn’t make it any less bad. Right? Um, but that is just the truth of her probable experience in 2003.

Traci Thomas 32:40
Right, right, right. And speaking of things that are totally out of my personal experience, how were there two calendars in your Oh, what is that name? Is that a name on the East Coast?

Kendra James 32:51
Here’s the thing, though. Every name in the book has been changed. Okay, the exception of our headmaster, and literally that was only because there have only been like five headmaster’s in the history of the school. So it’s like, you’re gonna figure it out. And nothing bad is written about him. You spot he’s cool. Got it. It’s cool. Dude. Some of us had crushes on him back in the day.

Traci Thomas 33:12
I’m gonna google him as soon as this is done to see.

Kendra James 33:16
But so it’s funny because they both they were both girls with C names. And were one of them was a sea and one of them was a KK and it was the same name. And it was just like, looking back on that and that. And that relationship like just long story short, for those who haven’t read it yet. My best friend found a new best friend of the same name of a new of a person that I was also becoming close with, at which caused massive jealousy throughout all of senior year, and so yeah, no, that was a really weird situation. It was very, very strange. And I don’t know how it happened.

Traci Thomas 33:57
So weird. I was just like, taken aback by the name. But if you change the name, then you know, how did you change the names? How did you decide what to call people?

Kendra James 34:04
Honestly, like just looking I would be I wrote the book. I literally wrote the book in my bathroom.

Traci Thomas 34:09
I was gonna get to that question. Yeah, so I would sometimes if I just like couldn’t find a name. I just looked up onto one of the posters in our bathrooms, and that just became the name. Some of them I tried to keep a little bit more like a little closer to what the person’s actual ID was. But some of them are really just random and out of nowhere. We’re coming to my favorite part of the episode where we get to talk about your process and and snacks. So you sort of teased this before also, you wrote the book in your bathroom, which there’s a great article and catapult that you wrote about it, which I will link to in the show notes for people. But I always ask folks, this you can give us sort of the version. How do you write? How often where are you? Can you have music on? Do you have snacks and beverages? Do you have rituals? Are you lighting candles? Are you you know, like doing a yoga class before? Like, what’s your vibe for writing.

Kendra James 35:13
So I kind of want to give you both. I want to give you my free pandemic slash the plan of how I intended to write this book and how it actually happened. Pre pandemic, I was a coffee shop pitch like I did not write in the house ever because I very much liked to separate workspace from web space and I have yet to be privileged enough to live in a in an apartment with an office.

Traci Thomas 35:39
So it’s coming. We’re gonna manifest that 2022 We’re getting you an office.

Kendra James 35:43
Fingers are crossed. So yeah, no, I wrote a coffee shops. I like to have a like beverage. In my hand. It’s usually like a coffee or a tea. And I do listen, I listen to music no matter where I’m writing my Spotify wrapped this year, the top listened artists was Hans Zimmer, because that’s what I was listening to all year while writing. And then the other ones are just like smatterings of sort of Billboard toppers from like, Goddess Wait. Oh, 3206 I wrote it. I wrote to a lot of Kanye, because college dropout was my absolute favorite favorite album in high school. So I listened to that a lot. And then yeah, just like a mixture of Billboard stuff from back then. And so I wrote how I ended up writing the book was with all that music, I still didn’t manage to have warm beverages, but I did write it in my bathroom, which is, and people people ask how. And it’s because it is basically the size of a third bedroom in New York City. Our apartment is so weird, we laid out, you could fit a twin bed in there if you took out like all of the bathroom stuff. And so there’s a built in vanity and desk area. And I just kind of once my husband and I knew that we were like stuck in the house, we were gonna be locked down. I kind of just turned that into into my space and wrote there and he luckily I was very lucky because he was super okay with it and very supportive and very okay with occasion, like, occasionally peeing into a Gatorade bottle, which I never asked him to do. But I think he just took it upon himself to like, really try not to bother me.

Traci Thomas 37:26
It takes a village to write a book. Okay. You have to all sacrifice.

Kendra James 37:30
Yeah. So that’s, that is where I wrote it. And yeah, I wrote it to the same soundtrack. Um, we have an espresso machine so I would make increasingly elaborate coffee drinks over the cry went through like a lavender latte phase where I was like, making my own lavender syrup for and going doing that.

Traci Thomas 37:48
Are there any snacks or is it weird to eat in the bath?

Kendra James 37:50
I don’t so I don’t eat while I write and usually it because I eat like a snake anyway, which is like I have like, one meal a day. And then like I’m kind of and then like maybe candy night.

Traci Thomas 38:03
What kind of candy. Talk about candy. Say more.

Kendra James 38:06
Oh gosh, it really so I’m seasonal. Throughout most of the year, it’s Jelly Bellies, specifically 2d Fruity bubblegum and hot cinnamon.

Traci Thomas 38:17
I’m talking about jelly beans in the book. Oh, God. Yes. I knew this about you.

Kendra James 38:21
No it’s that’s been a thing. Like forever. And then once Halloween rolls around, they released like this kind of Twizzler that I really liked that isn’t available for the rest of the year. It’s the small ones and a package.

Traci Thomas 38:33
I love okay. Yeah. And then and you love nerd rope.

Kendra James 38:37
I guess I nerd rope not so much anymore. But I was a big Nerds Rope nerd rope person in high school

Traci Thomas 38:42
nerd rope was big in high school. Yes. I used to go to the 711 with my best girlfriend and we would get 711 Diet Coke from the fountain. It had to be fountain with the green straw. Very important. And then nerd rope.

Kendra James 38:57
it’s really because they will also because back then they were 69 cents in nerd rope. I remember or at least where I was getting them. I remember they were cheap. Yeah. $2 now I was at a Walgreens the other day and I was shocked.

Traci Thomas 39:10
I have to correct the record. I said fountain it was not fountain. It was a bottle it was it was the bottle of Diet Coke with the straw. The fountain is from McDonald’s. I have a lot of feelings about diet coke in case anyone wants to do a podcast about diet coke. I’m available. Anyways, okay, I have another question though about your writing process. Because I read this in the article then I’ll only do some music but you also have a cafe. Yeah, thing.

Kendra James 39:38
So I had most people about that. It’s a weird app called Coffee tivity. I can never spell it but it’s called or I can never like pronounce.

Traci Thomas 39:45
I’ll link it in the show notes. Yeah, it’s got a lot of valves. It’s doing a lot.

Kendra James 39:50
A lot going on with the smelling. And so what I would do this is a very elaborate process, but I get a Bluetooth speaker set up the coffee sounds to play On the bluetooth speaker, but then I would pump them up kind of loud, because then I’m wearing I have my favorite pair of headphones, which is the Sony MX like 100, or something noise cancelling headphones. They’re amazing. I put those on, I’m playing music through there, but I can still sort of hear the rumbling of the cafe in the background. And that kind of helps me like, between that and the fact that I’ve been drinking like a smoke latte kind of helps me like trick my brain into thinking that I’m not in my bathroom until someone knocks on the door.

Traci Thomas 40:35
Okay but so the other part of this question, which I didn’t really ask, expressly, explicitly, is that you also have like a major day job. So how did you balance? We’ll tell people what that is. And then how did you balance writing with all of your other work that you do?

Kendra James 40:51
When I was writing the book, I was the managing editor of star trek.com. And I was the managing editor of star trek.com. During a moment that I think a lot of Star Trek fans right now we’re calling like our Renaissance, because they’re at when I left, I think they were like, four shows four or five shows on the air. So it was a very busy position. I had to travel it was a five day a week. Oh, it was a 40 hour a week job, sometimes more. And so I mean, the sad answer to your question is that I just didn’t have a weekend from dislike December. Yeah, December 2019. Until June of this year. I like kind of just I would go out like weekend nights. And like I would do like the occasional brunch. But I really like I was writing. Whenever I wasn’t working, because I didn’t take I could didn’t really have the luxury of taking a book sabbatical. Because like my husband, he works. However, he works in live events. And so once the pandemic happened, it was like the income was going like, but our combined income had gone down. Oh, my gosh, terrifying. Yeah. So it was it was definitely it was an interesting process. It was a very interesting process. But then by the time the book by the time I turned in my final edits the student, I was actually in the process of leaving there. And now I’m a Podcast Producer, mainly and like one of the real reasons of that was because at Star Trek, I was editing other people’s writing. So it was like constant daily wish it was like, I was either writing at home. And then I was getting to work editing other people’s writing. And then I would get edits back from my editor, Maddie. And then I’m like editing my own writing. It was just like a constant cycle. And I was, I was done. I could not look at anyone else’s writing my own included towards the end of that process.

Traci Thomas 42:45
Oh my gosh, and now you produce podcasts. And you are sitting there answering my questions. But you’re thinking to yourself, how can I do this better? And you know what? I love this. I love this for you. Because I know I read your book. I know you’re petty. I know you’re thinking about I know you’re thinking about it. I love it. I’m here for this. This is why like, this is why you’re here.

Kendra James 43:03
Let me ask you a question. How petty do I come off? That’s like, my husband’s like now and like that’s just like he’s like, No, the only thing I’m worried about is that people might think you’re terrible.

Traci Thomas 43:14
No, oh my god. No, it’s so great. If you’re not, it’s not okay. Well, let me actually preface this with my obsession and like love language is like talking shit being petty. I remember every little detail so that I can like, talk about it later. So for me, I saw a kindred spirit and I was like Kendra is awesome. I love her. If I was like a sensitive person who like believes in length handgun this and letting go, I would think that maybe you should go to more therapy. For me. I was like, this is a person I love I could hang out with, we could talk shit for years. Like we could make sure that something’s happened. Hermione Emma, she would not have gotten away with it if we weren’t together.

Kendra James 43:55
Oh I mean, here’s what I will say like I can tell where I have had growth in the ways in which people are really not identified. Oh, that’s really I can tell like the biggest areas of growth have come because like I could have given more details about people in like, high profile jobs. And I chose not to.

Traci Thomas 44:20
Good For You see, that’s great. I will cannot write a book because I will be like, and the social security number is and they drive this kind of car and this their address in case you know, anybody wanted to go egg their house?

Kendra James 44:34
Yeah, in some places, it really it came back down to like what I was saying before about, like, really actively throughout the process process of writing, like trying to afford myself like in the way that I was affording myself grace of being an adolescent, like really trying to extend that to like everyone else. And not just like the people who I was mad at but also like my own friends like just really trying to frame everyone’s actions. So in the context of the time period, and in the context of the surroundings and like what we were dealing with and that yeah, that really was like a cornerstone of writing. Well also like, there’s a little pettiness.

Traci Thomas 45:13
Yeah I mean, the truth is actually, I actually had this note while I was reading it all in all seriousness, is that I actually thought it was very interesting that in a lot of sections of the book, you almost come off as like self deprecating in situations where I’m like, I don’t know Kendra. I feel like you could give yourself more credit here. Like there were definitely moments where I was like, no, but that is really fucked up. You know, and like you I could tell that as a writer, you were trying to make sure that like you were being fair and to be fair there I think I think you I think you know, that should should not have happened. Okay, another favorite question. Super important. You gotta get on the record on this. What is a word? You can never spell correctly on the first try?

Kendra James 45:52
Oh I can give you two renaissance and receive like, I know the rule I know the rule but I it’s just not gonna happen. It’s not coming out.

Traci Thomas 46:01
Right. I love it. I don’t know if anyone’s ever said Renaissance. And that’s a word that I struggle with. So I have to say Rene Hassan’s but I don’t know that that helps me. Now that I’m saying that out loud. I’m like, I don’t know if I could spell Renaissance but that’s what we say. That is Hans. Okay, this is a very small question, but also very important to me personally. I need to know about the ice skating. I need to know about the spins. I need to know about the dizziness moment it do you get dizzy. I was a dancer we used to spot but like a lot of turns. You’re still feeling a little sick.

Kendra James 46:32
I still skate, Oh, yeah, I mean, I haven’t since like June because my rank is closed again. But, ya know, I still skate and usually like the first the first time I go back and do a spin, like, I am dizzy. After that. It’s like, whatever, it’s, it’s fine. It’s really it’s like the same thing. Falling was like never an issue for me. I think it’s just like things that you really, your body just gets used to it on it. As as time goes by I I wasn’t afraid of falling until I broke my elbow. Actually, while I was working at a school. When the school that I talked about in southern New York in the book, not a terrible place to have broken my elbow because that was a terrible school. They were not worth it. But ya know, after I broke my elbow doing twizzles which are the moves down the ice where Olympics are coming up if you watch ice dancing, the twizzles are the ones that they do side by side down the ice turning.

Traci Thomas 47:31
I love an Olympic sport. I love it ice skating moment. I have been known to do my own impersonations in my socks of the span where I tried to get really low and grabbed my foot and spin. I know that’s figure skating. I don’t think they do that in the ice dance.

Kendra James 47:45
I mean, you’ll post it you get some partnered?

Traci Thomas 47:48
Yeah, there’s, there’s nothing greater to me, except for when they do the one where they take the leg up. And then they are the woman. Yeah. And then they take it and then they spin and then they go down. You know, it’s like, for me is everything.

Kendra James 48:00
No, it’s funny. That’s also my husband’s favorite thing. Like, he doesn’t really pay attention. But every so often, like I was watching skating all this weekend, and he’ll just walk by someone’s doing a spin and he’s like, that’s the stuff. Yeah, it’s just it’s great hoops.

Traci Thomas 48:11
Okay, you’ll remember I can’t remember her name. Brunette, very small, very thin, very flexible Olympian figure skater.

Kendra James 48:20
And she, the one who’s not Sarah Hughes is who you’re thinking of, and I know I can see her in my head. But I cannot.

Traci Thomas 48:29
She will. She was so flexible. And her sprint were so insane. Sasha Sasha Cohen, what’s my idol? Because the flexibility and the spins, it was there. I don’t know if she I don’t know if she was any good, but I know that at the end of her routines, I think whoever was like, I don’t remember what this was anything. I was in college, but I will never forget something you know that stupid Romeo and Juliet song that everyone I escaped to?

Oh yes. So this person had done and I think it was her. And at the end, the announcer was like, everyone else skates to Romeo and Juliet. She is Julia. And I will never forget. I died laughing. I was definitely in college. My friend Chanel will remember but like it was so I mean, I have a passion for Olympic sports in case you can’t tell but the fingers excited.

Kendra James 49:24
I mean, I like I said I spent all weekend watching skating and that is like my decompression. I literally I just sat on the couch. That’s all I did. And I will watch I watch every event I watched some of you didn’t like juniors like that’s how Yeah, I love this.

Traci Thomas 49:36
I love this. Well, the thing that’s so great about the Olympics, which I know is like the corniest dumbest part is like when they try to tell you the stories and when you’re like get invested in the people. I love that last time when they did the curling, and they had the Korean curling team and they called themselves The Breakfast Club. And they gave themselves nicknames for different breakfasts. So one of them was like pancake and one of then was sunny for sunny side up eggs. I’m like, I love those women. I was like, If they lose, I can never watch the Olympics again. Like it was so crazy. But anyways, this really got off on a tangent but I need it’s fine. We need to talk about skating.

Kendra James 50:15
Yes. No to answer your to answer your question like I, my body is just used to it at this point at age 34. Now, like, falling is a little scarier. Yeah. Yeah, it’s actually no, it’s not even a little scarier. It’s a lot scarier. Like, there’s certain jumps like that I will only do if I’m on the ice with my coach. But then there’s stuff that like, my body just knows how to do like it has known since I was 15. So I like might not look great anymore, but it could do are you like the person during like the free skate at the rink is in the middle doing like all these cool things? Like, no, because no, because in LA, like LA has like a great figure skating culture. And I like kind of didn’t realize how amazing it was out here. But even at my rank, which is like a really a tiny, tiny rink in Van Nuys. Like there was a girl there who’s being scouted to skate for our media, like so I am, I am heart and she’s great. She also has, she will hit you on the ice. She’ll just skate right into you if you get in her way. But like, I am nowhere near as impressive as I as I once was, I used to another tangent, but like actually kind of connected to the book in a way. When I lived in New York, I would go skate at Rockefeller Center in the mornings, and there were times where like a woman would kind of just like, let me go on just because they needed like sometimes they do that like crane shot. And they like like to have people on the ice. And so she would just like let me go on and skate

Traci Thomas 51:48
I love this for you, your like your moment of fame?

Kendra James 51:52
Well, I think like also, there was just like, I got some interesting comments when I would I would skate there. Like I literally had one toward like one family come up to me and say like, you’re the best black skater I’ve ever seen. Like that kind of thing was like literally happen. Connected connected. Yeah, yeah, it was very, very interesting.

Traci Thomas 52:13
Oh, my gosh, no, the best black skater is backflips your car right.

Kendra James 52:18
that’s the thing like I’m hardly like you got your sorry, I have been James like now you’ve got Star Andrews like.

Traci Thomas 52:24
I don’t know these guys. I don’t know these people. But I’m hoping that I’m gonna learn about them this year.

Kendra James 52:30
James is going back to the Olympics with a little bit of controversy, but she’ll be there.

Traci Thomas 52:35
I cannot wait very excited. We Oh, there was also a pairs in Canada. It was like a black woman and a white guy.

Kendra James 52:41
That’s Vanessa. She was with France. But now she’s not.

Traci Thomas 52:47
oh, okay. So my husband is white. And I used to say to him during the Olympics last time. It’s us, honey, that’s us.

Kendra James 52:55
I mean, my my white husband also yesterday suggested that we do skating lessons together. I was like, I- no.

Traci Thomas 53:02
I love this for him. Maybe he will skate with me and we can I can pretend to be here. Yeah, some people skate to Kendra James. She is Kendra. Okay, we’re gonna wrap up. I’m getting crazy. But this is a serious question for real. You grow up writing you love to write you do your live journals. You do all these things? What does it mean for you? I guess on the eve of your book coming out for you to have a book coming out.

Kendra James 53:29
It’s still very surreal. Because like, I mean, like you mentioned like I started writing like fanfiction about like Sirius Black’s long lost daughter. Like that is what that means. Oh, that’s like, basically, I used to write Harry Potter fan fiction on like, fanfiction dotnet. And so it’s, it is very surreal to know that like, this is actually going to be a published work. And those people that I used to like write fanfiction with and that I used to roleplay with, they like also, I didn’t really get to get into it so much in the book, because that would just be a whole other thing. But they were so much my anchors while I was at boarding school, because I like I talked a lot about the concept of like, the friends that are like kind of chosen for you. And then like the friends that you actually get to choose for yourself that have like, common interest in bonds. And a lot of my online friends like people who I simply never met before and wouldn’t meet even until years later. Like, they got me through high school. And we all wrote together like we did like these communal writing groups. And so it’s like really crazy. I’m the first one out of that group to have a book published. And it’s really, really quite surreal to know that like, I came from that world and have managed to translate it into a book.

Traci Thomas 54:55
Oh my god, I love this. Okay, so that leads me perfectly into this question, which is what would Kendra at Taft, think of Kendra now?

Kendra James 55:03
I don’t know if she could call, like, I actually don’t know if like my younger self could comprehend that, like, I just got up. But the last thing I did before the pandemic really hit hard was I was on a Star Trek cruise. Like for my job, while also like writing a book, my younger self would not be able to comprehend the fact that those things are being done.

Traci Thomas 55:27
You’re doing those things?

Kendra James 55:28
Yes, I am doing those things. Not only am I doing those things, like I’m getting paid money to do those things. It’s just like something that I didn’t think was possible. And a lot about like, especially because like when I was attacked, I feel like my, my parents in some ways, were very focused on me going into going into finance. Like my, because my dad was a was a banker. And so just the fact that I’ve managed to completely like, get away from that world entirely. And just like forge my own thing, and entertainment is.

Traci Thomas 56:00
I’m getting emotional. I’m so proud of you. It’s so cool. Like, I’m literally gonna cry. I’ve been so emotional recently. I don’t I just think it’s so great. Like, I can’t speak for your younger self. But I feel like if my emotions are any indication, very proud of you. Like you did that thing. It’s so fucking cool. Okay, I only have two more questions. One is for people who like this book, what are some other books that you might recommend to them that are maybe in conversation with what you did with admissions?

Kendra James 56:29
Yeah, I always recommend black ice by Lorraine Carey. And that’s a book by a woman it came out like 91 are late 80s, early 90s. And she went to St. Paul’s in the 70s. St. Paul’s is another boarding school. It’s, I believe, has like either the largest or the second largest endowment. Like I think it’s close to a billion. Yeah, they are very elite, very wealthy, very rich school. And she writes about her experiences there as a black student in the 70s coming out of academic scholarship program. And that book we read, we actually read that book for an English class when I was at Taft, and it really stuck with me, so I highly recommend that one. And then I mean, my, the rest of my list for this book is like very, it’s all very silly. I feel like because I there’s books to recommend, like, the books that I read, to prep myself like to, quote unquote, prep myself for boarding school. I loved books, like spying on Miss Mueller, which was like a world war two boarding school story. I loved a little men, which was also like a boarding school sequel to Little Women. I read so much of that sort of stuff when I was younger. And then just also like, as much as books shaped me like film and television to to like, you’ve read it in film and television plays into this book. Yeah, who ate a lot? So I yeah, I don’t I don’t know. Like, I would say black ice is definitely the biggest main one. But then I think when you once you’ve finished reading, you’ll find other things to dig into just from like some of the titles named.

Traci Thomas 58:06
Definitely, definitely. And then last one, if you can have one person dead or alive read this book, who would you want it to be?

Kendra James 58:12
Oh, my god. Um, I mean, honestly, it would be very interesting. I think he I think he has passed away. But I I feel like this book should be in conversation in some ways, or in a lot of ways with the stories of other black students who have been to Taft. And so the first black student who went to Taft, like that would be a big one to like, see what his opinion and perspective would have been on this.

Traci Thomas 58:42
I love that that’s a great answer. I was thinking Emma but you know,

Kendra James 58:45
yeah, well, I mean, again, like I’m trying I try to steer away from the petty.

Traci Thomas 58:50
Well, that’s what I’m here for. I’m like the little petty, the little petty Princess on your shoulder. Like here, Emma. Let me mail this to you, you little bitch. Kendra, this was so so great. Thank you so much. Congratulations on your book. People. It is officially out in the world right now you can get Kendra’s book. It was her birthday the day the book came out. So you should definitely get it as a birthday present for Kendra. That’s all Yeah. Yeah. So Kendra, thank you so so much for being here.

Kendra James 59:21
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Traci Thomas 59:23
And everyone else we will see you in the stacks.

Thank you so much for listening and thank you to Kendra for being my guest. I’d also like to thank Roxanne Jones for coordinating this interview. Remember the stocks book club pick for January is Passing by Nella Larsen. We will be discussing the book on the podcast on Wednesday, January 26 with Cree Myles. If you love the show and want inside access to it, head to patreon.com/thestacks to join The Stacks Pack. Make sure you’re subscribed to The Stacks wherever you listen to your podcasts and if you’re listening through Apple Podcasts or Spotify, be sure to leave us a rating and a review. For more from The Stacks, follow us on social media at thestackspod on Instagram at thestackspod_ on Twitter and check out our website thestackspodcast.com. This episode of The Stacks was edited by Christian Dueñas, with production assistance from Lauren Tyree. Our graphic designer is Robin McCreight and our theme music is from Tagirijus. The Stacks is created and produced by me, Traci Thomas.

Megan Caballero
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