The Campus Novel Is, Guess What, Also So White

“There are no HBCU novels. Our first-generation Mexican American freshman opuses are far and few between. Don Lee’s The Collective takes a stab at shaking the framework, and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao rattles the genre’s predilections as well, but the campus novel could just as soon be called The Adventures of Eccentric White Kids. For a genre built on the notion of change, it’s lacking an awful lot of it.”