An Anonymous Send-Up of Sidwell Friends Has People Talking

Recently, I met up with the author Emma Sasakito discuss her novel about Sidwell Friends, although her name isn’t Emma Sasaki and the novel, she insists, isn’t really about Sidwell Friends. Titled It’s a Privilege Just to Be Here, the book is an entertaining but scathing depiction of a barely fictionalized DC private school named Wesley Friends. Sasaki, who’s an adjunct lecturer at a local university, went to Sidwell herself (I was a student there around the same time, though we didn’t know each other), and she decided not to attach her real name to the book, in part to spare her kids negative attention. I agreed not to reveal her identity in this story.

We decided to have lunch across the street from Sidwell, at the City Ridge Tatte, which appears in a scene of the book without being named. It’s just one of many almost undisguised details that make the Sidwell setting obvious—from specifics of its campus to characters with names and jobs that closely resemble those of real people—and the plot is driven by a racist incident that somewhat echoes a real situation at Sidwell a few years ago. The school comes off badly. Some students come off badly. Many of the parents come off quite remarkably badly.

And yet Sasaki says the novel isn’t payback for old slights or an effort to reveal sordid secrets of a prominent institution. “It’s based on Sidwell, but it isn’t really about Sidwell,” she says. “It’s about parenting and privilege. It could be any school. It just happens to be that I went to Sidwell and live in Washington, and so the details are very easy for me to fold in­to the story. I know people think that I’m carrying around some sort of PTSD from Sidwell. I’m not. You know, I have some resentment. But I think we all have resentment towards our high school.”

The book was also a way for Sasaki to grapple with her own experiences of racism. “Growing up Asian in the ’80s in Washington, DC, was not fun,” she says. “We didn’t have the language or the tools we have now; the idea that the East Asian students at Sidwell would have felt left out wouldn’t have entered anybody’s mind, though I don’t necessarily blame the school for that. Now we have more open discussions, and yet it seems like there’s still a problem. And that is sort of what drove me to write the book.”

After lunch, I made a proposal: Would she like to walk across the street and check out the Sidwell campus? Sasaki hasn’t been back much since she graduated—she doesn’t go to reunions, she says, and was last there when her daughter had to attend an event. But she was game; we headed over.

The lavish campus we encountered felt transformed from the more modest institution we’d attended years ago. The most immediate difference proved problematic: an imposing security fence that now bars access to outsiders, whether they happen to have written a harsh takedown of the school or not. We walked around the perimeter a bit, exchanging reminiscences. But the school struck us both as pretty alien. “You know, it looks so different, and the fences are so imposing,” Sasaki said. “It’s almost like it doesn’t really want you to have memories.” We asked a security guard if there was any way we could have a quick look around the campus. He said that isn’t allowed.

This article appears in the September 2024 issue of Washingtonian.

Rob Brunner

Politics and Culture Editor

Rob Brunner grew up in DC and moved back in 2017 to join Washingtonian. Previously, he was an editor and writer at Fast Company and other publications. He lives with his family in Chevy Chase DC.