It’s a Privilege Just to Be Here

A Japanese American private school teacher gets caught in a firestorm of racial politics in Sasaki’s timely if muddled debut. Aki Hayashi-Brown teaches history at the prestigious Wesley Friends School in Washington, D.C., where her daughter, Meg, is a junior. When someone graffitis “Make Wesley White Again” on the arts building, Aki is dragooned into serving as interim director of a new DEI task force. Meg insists her mom find a way to punish suspected culprit Aaron Wakeman, son of the school’s biggest donor, but Aki feels torn between her fierce desire for justice and the instinct her parents instilled in her to cope with racism by “ignoring, denying, or deflecting.” Meg, on the other hand, is outspoken in her accusations against Aaron, and after she’s suspended for slapping him, the pressures on Aki mount. Some of the satire feels a bit convoluted—Aki is understandably conflicted, but it’s sometimes hard to tell whether Sasaki means to skewer the cloistered world of private schools or the cultural forces that make her characters believe such institutions are a necessary evil. Despite its occasional frustrations, this leaves readers with much to chew on. Agent: Melissa Danaczko, Stuart Krichevsky Literary. (June)