ABSTRACT
Kofi's story tells of how he worked to negotiate school success, avoid negative peer pressure, navigate peer networks, and effectively deal with institutional racism and xenophobia. Guided by a desire to “take advantage of everything that was in front of me,” Kofi, a Ghanian refugee, saw university education as a path toward realizing his ambition to become a lawyer so that he could help his mother, “give back” to his community, find “a way out” of the poor social and economic conditions he had known, and use his education as a “ticket” to success. As he put it, “Education will get you to the station. While a little education will get you near the station, the more education you get, gets you to the platform. There might be a barrier that won't let you onto the actual train. But education can get you that far.” After graduating from York University, Kofi obtained degrees in international relations at the London School of Economics in the U.K., in Mandarin at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and in law at Columbia University in New York; at the time of writing he was practicing law in New Jersey.
