Souls Looking Back
Life Stories of Growing Up Black
-
- $64.99
-
- $64.99
Publisher Description
Most of what is written these days about young black men and women emphasizes incarceration and mortality rates, teen pregnancy, drug use, and domestic strife. This collection of sixteen autobiographical essays by African-Americans, Africans in America, Afro-Caribbean and biracial college students who have tackled significant obstacles to achieve success and degrees of self-understanding offers a broader, more hopeful portrait of the adolescent experiences of minority youth. Here are emotionally honest and reflective stories of economic hardship, racial bias, loneliness, and anger--but also of positive role models, spiritual awakening, perseverance, and racial pride. In these essays, students explore the process of self-discovery and the realization of cultural identity. The pieces are accompanied by commentary from prominent African-American scholars, such as Jewelle Taylor Gibbs and Peter C. Murrell, Jr. Together they create a vivid portrait of what it is like to grow up as a black person in America, and offer a springboard to current debates about self-discovery, cultural identity and assimilation. Often raw and painful, always honest and affecting, this collection of personal stories written by young people stands as an eloquent tribute to the courage of today's youth and to the power of their own words.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In addressing the "formative influences of home, school, church and first awareness of racial difference," 16 black and biracial college students write with an unabashed honesty and directness that outshines the dense "explanatory" essays by the editors. No doubt, the students' candor was nurtured by the editors' judicious decision to allow them to write pseudonymously. "Maria," the only graduate student included, discusses the criteria her peers and community bring to the question, "What Is Black Enough?" The product of a mostly white, middle-class suburb, she notes the "iconic role of her white first boyfriend, whose attraction was fueled by their racial difference and the idea he was transgressing." Throughout the collection, students explore the contradictions and frustrations of the tensions associated with racial difference. "Christine," the daughter of an Austrian mother and an African-American father, was dismayed that her "allegiance" to blacks was questioned when she mentioned her Austrian heritage. As a gay black adolescent, "Claudio" faced the challenge of belonging to more than one minority, deciding finally to become a "vocal" gay rights activist because of homophobia in the black community. Though the editors' stiff essays interrupt the otherwise rhythmic flow of black and biracial students experiences across the class spectrum, the students clearly communicate the "transformative power in both the hearing and telling of stories."
