Testimony: Young African-Americans on Self-Discovery and Black Identity

by Deborah Turner

Book Overview

A collection of writings chronicles the search for Black identity by a new generation of young people, recounting present-day experiences with racism, the dynamics between men and women, attending... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807009296
• ISBN13: 9780807009291
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Beacon Press (MA)
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 0.89 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Multitude of Voices

I love this book. I have purchased it numerous times and passed it on to friends. I will be buying it for myself to keep soon. I love each unique voice in this book . I love the poems, I love the essays. I love the thoughtfulness, introspection, triumph, sorrow, hope, pain, joy, frustration, and most of all the truth and beauty in each voice. Americans from all heritages would do well to read this book. I keep thinking it should be more well-known and talked about than it is. It is a very important contribution and reflection of the American experience. It should be read in every high school in America. Yes, it is from the African American perspective. But we, especially in America, are all connected to this history...whether we want to be or not. We can close our eyes all we want to the fact that being black in America is not the same as being white in America. But it doesn't change the truth. I hope that Ms. Tarpley with publish another such book. Maybe even have the same contributors submit their reflections and experiences from where they are now.

This is a great book!!!

When I first picked up this book many, many years ago, I did not expect to connect with much of the material, because I did not feel that I identified with American Black culture, even though I am African American myself. I had been struggling with my "mixed-race" identity, feeling slightly out of place in both the White and Black worlds. I was drawn in by the collection of poems and essays in varying voices and perspectives. To my surprise, I found that there were pieces of me in story after story. As well, I began to understand ways of life that had seemed completely foreign to me before. The margins of my book are full of commentary, with certain passages highlighted and triple starred to show just how much they resonated with me. In the years since then, I have recommended this book for use in my alma mater graduate social work program, I have used this book in lectures and presentations about racial identity, and I have recommended it to my Black or "mixed-race" clients who are struggling with who they are and how they fit into the world. I have never read a book that more intimately shows the complexities of being African American, and demonstrates that there is no one definition of Black culture. Whether we are into hip hop or Mozart, from the inner city or the rural Midwest, we all fit in somehow or another through our own self-acceptance.