Souls Looking Back: Life Stories of Growing Up Black

The editors recognized an absence of African American voices in adolescent psychology. So they set out to collect autobiographical essays on childhood memories of adolescents of African descent. They approached approximately 50 students (males and females in equal numbers) and invited them to write about the experience of growing up as a person of color in the United States, Canada, or the West Indies. This five-year project resulted in sixteen personal narratives from black and biracial (all of whom have black fathers) students who studied at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, Simmons in Boston, and McGill University in Montreal. Each chapter--on social class and race, identity, and resilience and resistance--begins with an overview of the issue written by an African American scholar, followed by four to six personal narratives. The accounts are both thought-provoking and extremely intimate. This book is well done and sure to create a platform for discussion and reflection. Maybe through these voices we can all learn some compassion and understanding. [Andrew_Garrod__Janie_Ward__Robert_Kilkenny__Tracy_Bokos-Z1__1_

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