The question comes directly after I say I’m from San Francisco: “Where did you go to high school? Did you go to Lowell?” I’ve gotten the question so often over the past two decades that I can’t help but affirm that high school indeed never ends.
The bewildering issue of race in majority-minority schools, the cocooned bliss of being a nerd among nerds, the college-admissions beauty-pageant-cum-deathmatch, and what it takes to endure the self-esteem-decimating academic pressure cooker that is San Francisco’s top public high school are all interrogated in a documentary premiering at this weekend’s Sundance Film Festival.
In one scene, a teacher gives a real-talk presentation about college admissions, and he says even if on paper you should be accepted into an elite university, you may not get in because—and it’s in big letters on his screen—“You’re Asian!”