Special Report: DCUM-related Books

Last February, a thread in the "Private & Independent Schools" forum alerted me that a novel centered on a fictional District of Columbia-based private school that is clearly meant to be Sidwell Friends was going to be published. The thread, which was titled "Novel based on Sidwell coming out in summer", also mentioned that the book featured a parenting website named "dcparentzone.com" that is clearly a fictionalized DCUM. I was intrigued that DCUM, even in fictional form, might figure in a novel and made a note to read the book, which was named "It's a Privilege Just to Be Here: A Novel", once it was available. Before I had the chance to read the novel, I learned of a second novel named, "All the Dirty Secrets", that went even further in portraying DCUM. This book not only used the real name of the website but included fictional posts said to have been in the forum. I promptly added that book to my reading list as well. I was then contacted by Jon Hart about his debut novel, "Party School", that he thought would be of interest to DCUM readers. That book also went into my queue. I've now had a chance to read all three novels and want to provide brief overviews of each.

I'll start with "Party School". Unlike the other two books that I will discuss, this one has no direct connection to DCUM. However, it does feature a number of characters that could have been taken directly from the DCUM forums, especially the "Private & Independent Schools" and the "College and University Discussion" forums. The protagonist, Dylan, has just finished his senior year at an elite private school and, along with the other students in his cohort, is preparing for college. Like many of the posters on DCUM, the parents of Dylan's classmates are obsessed with prestigious colleges and determined that their children will attend them. As his friends prepare to attend these prestigious "it" colleges, Dylan's only option is a lowly college that he describes as a "safety for a safety". Once he is away at school, Dylan struggles with his disappointment at being forced to resort to the college and continues pursuing better options. The lack of prestige of his school causes him embarrassment and even turns out to be a hurdle in his relationship with his girlfriend who is attending a prestigious "it" school. But he discovers unexpected strengths of the college and gains appreciation for it. Meanwhile, several families in his hometown — including those most obsessed with having their kids attend "it" schools — become embroiled in a college admissions scandal reminiscent of the Varsity Blues affair.

"Party School" addresses many themes that will be familiar to DCUM posters such as parental emphasis on prestigious colleges and competition for admissions. The story also explores the challenges of the first year of college as students adjust to a new environment, make new friends, and leave the familiar confines of their homes behind. Dylan grows not only as a person, but in his understanding of what is important about college. It is a good antidote to the countless threads in the college forum suggesting that anything less than a top 10 school is a failure.

"It's a Privilege Just to Be Here: A Novel" is by Emma Sasaki, a local author who appears to be known by several of the posters in the thread that originally made me aware of the book. Sasaki begins the book by saying, "Much of this story is true. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. And to keep the guilty guessing." With that promising start, plus some of the pre-publication promotion, I expected that the novel would be full of insider gossip about Sidwell. Unfortunately, Sasaki doesn't spill enough tea to fill a thimble. The fact that many parents are wealthy, entitled, and defensive of their privileges is hardly a surprise. These are things that anyone who has read the DCUM private school forum would already know. Some posters suggested that the novel is an attempt at revenge by Sasaki who, they argue, still bears a grudge from her own experience at Sidwell. However, Sasaki doesn't extract much vengeance either. Most chapters of the book begin with an excerpt from posts on "dcparentzone.com" which is described as "a mean-spirited online bulletin board where parents go online to anonymously spew vitriol and malicious gossip". Does that sound familiar? The target of Sasaki's pen is the school's Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion program. Her complaint is not that the DEI initiative goes too far, as many DCUM posters would have it, but that it doesn't go far enough. Many of the posters in the DCUM discussion criticized the book due to everything from misspellings to simply not being that interesting. Truth be told, the novel didn't exactly keep me on the edge of my seat. However, her central criticism of the school's DEI program might be worth considering. Moreover, the same critique might apply more widely to DEI programs in general. In Sasaki's view, the DEI program is a thin veneer that hides a reality of privilege, discrimination, and exclusion beneath it. It is a sort of DEI virtue signalling that, in reality, achieves none of its goals. What might be called a sort of "Potemkin liberalism." However, Sasaki probably would have been better off delving into this topic from an academic angle rather than in the context of a novel. As far as revealing Sidwell's secrets, I think that you have to be in the contradictory position of already knowing the secrets in order to know that they were revealed. There are some obvious Sidwell personalities, such as a fictionalized Jake Tapper, and an upper school principal who has the same last name as an actual former upper school principal. Fortunately, that character is one of the few who comes off well in the novel. But generally, you will find much harsher criticism of the school in our forums. The thread about this novel is interesting in its own right. It appears that Sasaki herself participated in the thread — at least there is a post that says it was written by the book's author. Many of the reactions were exactly as the novel might have predicted. A fact noted by a poster who wrote, "It’s almost as if the writer wrote the book about the type of people in this forum….."

The third book that I will discuss is "All the Dirty Secrets" by Aggie Blum Thompson, who is another local author. Thompson is quite clearly a DCUM reader. She explicitly names DCUM and accurately says that "D.C. Urban Moms is a hugely popular anonymous forum that has been around for almost 20 years." The main character of the novel says that DCUM is her "number one guilty pleasure and time waster", probably sentiments with which many can relate. This novel also involves a D.C. private school, in this case one named Washington Prep. It starts with two generations of Washington Prep students attending Beach Week at Dewey Beach. While current students engage in underage drinking and other mainstays of Beach Week at a beach house, their parents and other alumni hover at a nearby restaurant, allegedly to be close in case their assistance is required. What immediately struck me as the narrative switched between the students and the adults was that much of the social dynamics remained the same. Apparently, as the saying goes, "high school never ends." Before the night is over, however, a tragedy involving one of the students strikes. Moreover, the event is eerily similar to an occurrence decades earlier when the parents were attending their own Beach Week. The novel then sets out on two separate timelines, slowly revealing the plot to the reader. DCUM is featured several times in the book with fictional messages often being read. The suggestion that a private school administrator's first reaction when faced with a public relations disaster would be to check for posts on DCUM is likely not far from the truth. I do have to say, for the record, however, that many of the posts that appear in the book would not have lasted five minutes on the real DCUM. We would have been buried under an avalanche of reports and removed the posts immediately. But far be it for me to stand in the way of artistic license. Moreover, at one point, one of the characters says that she has just reached out to the website's administrators, which technically I believe I can claim as my first appearance in a novel. As with the earlier books, many of the characters of this novel could have come directly from the DCUM forums. But even more so in this case. In fact, Thompson has a line about the size of an SUV being inverse to the size of the woman driving it that I remember seeing almost word for word in a DCUM thread at one time. Now I'm wondering if that was something Thompson herself posted, something that she may have read on the forum, or a saying that is so common that it might appear in multiple places. I quite enjoyed this book, enough so that I also read Thompson's earlier novel, "I Don't Forgive You". "All the Dirty Secrets" was published in 2022, and Thompson has published additional novels in the meantime that I may try to read. I should probably add that, strictly speaking, I didn't read this book, but rather listened to the audiobook. That was narrated by Josephine Huang and Hillary Huber, who did a great job and made the book especially entertaining.