A mixed-heritage dancer's coming of age within the African diaspora is shaped by abuse at the hands of a cousin, her mother's descent into addiction, and her father's efforts to create a Nigerian-inspired home in America.

There are many watchers and they are always white. That's the first thing Echo notices as she settles into Dartmouth College. Despite graduating high school in Cleveland as valedictorian, Echo immediately struggles to keep up in demanding classes. Dartmouth made many promises it couldn't keep. The campus is not a rainbow-colored utopia where education lifts every voice. Nor is it a paradise of ideas, an incubator of inclusivity, or even an exciting...

""'You must work twice as hard to get half as much.' Adina Walker has known this the entire time she's been on scholarship at the prestigious Edgewater Academy -- a school for the rich (and mostly white) upper class of New England. It's why she works so hard to be perfect and above reproach, no matter what she must force beneath the surface. Even one slip can cost you everything. And it does. One fight, one moment of lost control, leaves Adina blacklisted...

"Bleu Montclair knew as a young girl that she would one day escape the hard, unrelenting streets of Flint, Michigan, and when her desperate prayers are answered in the form of a scholarship to UCLA, Bleu knows she's struck gold. But soon after arriving, all her beautiful, bright dreams begin to fall apart. Endless temptations abound in the form of cars, clothes, booze, drugs, and Bleu cannot keep up"--Page 4 of cover.