Souls Looking Back

Dartmouth College and is co-editor of Adolescent Portraits (1999). Janie Victoria Ward is Associate Professor of Education and Human Services at Simmons College and is co-editor of Mapping the Moral Domain (1988). Tracy L.Robinson is Associate Professor in the Department of Counselor Education at North Carolina State University and is co-author of The Convergence of Race, Ethnicityand Gender (1999). Robert Kilkenny is co-editor of Adolescent Portraits (1999) and is Clinical Instructor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School.

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.

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Social Class and Race Class and Race in Negotiating Identity 1. Born with a Veil 2. What Is Black Enough? 3. Living between the Lines 4. I Reconcile the Irreconcilable II. Identity The Social Construction of Race, Ethnicity, and Culture The Intersections of Identity 5. Color-blind 6. Walking a Thin Line 7. Becoming Myself 8. Becoming Comfortable in My Skin 9. Caught between Two Cultures 10. Lost in the Middle III. Resiliance and Resistance Resiliance and Resistance 11. Gotta Keep Climbin' All de Time 12. Finding Zion 13. Feeling the Pressure to Succeed 14. Running Hurdles 15. Reflections on My Survival 16. Quest for Peace