I DON'T WANT TO DIE POOR

The author of I Can’t Date Jesus (2018) illuminates the “soul-crushing” financial hardships associated with the pursuit of higher education.

Throughout his life, Arceneaux has struggled to free himself from the quicksand of student loan debt, and he acknowledges the impact this debt has had on many aspects of his life. During his senior year of high school, against his mother’s wishes, Arceneaux set his heart on attending Howard University, a prestigious, historically black college and an attainable goal regardless of its tuition—at least according to a handsome college-fair representative with whom the author was smitten. Though realizing that initial loans and hard-won scholarships were not going to sustain his life and schooling in Washington, D.C., it wasn’t enough to persuade him to return to his hometown of Houston. Remaining at Howard, the author racked up skyrocketing debt and soon became familiar with “rude private debt companies that hound the living hell out of you.” As he writes, “the student loan industry is a barely regulated, predatory system, and with Donald Trump in the White House and those equally useless people in Congress, oversight of the industry is becoming nonexistent.” Throughout these essays, Arceneaux passionately and candidly displays his political and racial awareness alongside sharp opinions on popular culture, marijuana use, Instagram, and depression. At times, the author’s writing comes off as overindulgent and peevish, much more so than in his previous book. He’s at his strongest when honestly evaluating the merciless harassment of robocalls and debt collectors who called him (and his mother, who co-signed many of his loans) early mornings and late nights while he struggled to stay afloat with writing gigs, some of which went unpaid for months. Anyone who struggles with debt and lives in what Arceneaux calls the “United States of Wage Stagnation and Economic Inequality” will relate to his predicament.

A mixed bag of contemporary cultural insight and cautionary introspection on the universal issue of student loan debt.