Books

Children of the Dream : Our Own Stories of Growing Up Black in America (Children of Conflict)
White Grizzly Bear's Legacy: Learning to Be Indian
Charles S. Johnson: Leadership Beyond the Veil in the Age of Jim Crow
Castro (Headway Guides for Beginners Great Lives Series)
Longing to Tell : Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy
The Letters That Never Came (Jewish Latin Amer Series)
Shower Posse: The Most Notorious Jamaican Crime Organization
Bailando en el silencio: escenas de una niñez puertorriqueña
Walking Integrity: Benjamin Elijah Mays, Mentor to Martin Luther King Jr.
Masquerade: Dancing Around Death in Nazi Occupied Hungary
Romance of a Little Village Girl (Paso Por Aqui: Series on the Nuevomexicano Literary Heritage (Paperback))
Black Spirituality and Black Consciousness: Soul Force, Culture and Freedom in the African-American Experience
Son of Italy
Eyes to My Soul: The Rise or Decline of a Black FBI Agent
Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow: The Tragic Courtship and Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore
This Is How We Flow: Rhythm in Black Cultures
In the Shadow of Love: Stories from My Life
Crowning Anguish: Memoirs of a Persian Princess from the Harem to Modernity 1884-1914
Fire, Snow and Honey: Voices from Kurdistan
Immigrants' Son: A Memoir and Essay
Alice Walker (Modern Novelists)
Rescuing Haya: Confessions of an 8th Generation Israeli Emigrant
Black Studies: Theory, Method, and Cultural Perspectives
An Oppositionist for Life: Memoirs of the Chinese Revolutionary Zheng Chaolin
Contemporary Hispanic Biography: Profiles from the International Hispanic Community (Contemporary Hispanic Biography)

Children of the Dream: Our Own Stories of Growing Up Black in America (Children of Conflict)

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Hurts, wounds, hopes and triumphs of growing up Black
A book of relevance to everyone who has experienced racism
"ýout of the mouths of babes"
These stories are literally our own. New voices, old truths.
An intimate view of Black youth's struggle with racism

Children of the Dream: Our Own Stories of Growing Up Black in America (Children of Conflict)
Laurel Holliday
Manufacturer: Atria
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

African-American & Black | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

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Why Do They Hate Me?: Young Lives Caught In War And Conflict

ASIN: 0671008064

Book Description

"I let somebody call me 'nigger.' It wasn't just any old body, either; it was my friend. That really hurt."
-- Amitiyah Elayne Hyman

Martin Luther King, Jr., dreamed of a day when black children were judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. His eloquent charge became the single greatest inspiration for the achievement of racial justice in America. In her powerful fourth book in the Children of Conflict series, Laurel Holliday explores how far we have come as she presents thirty-eight African-Americans who share their experiences as Children of the Dream.

"I was brought up with white Barbie dolls of impossible proportions and long silky blonde hair -- neither of which I possessed. As a child I believed what I was taught, and I wasn't taught to love myself for who I am -- an African-American."
-- Charisse Nesbit

The unforgettable people we hear from are young and old, rich and poor, from inner cities, suburbia, and rural America. In chronicles that are highly personal, funny, tragic, and triumphant, the contributors tell us what it is like coming of age stigmatized by the color of their skin, yet proud of their heritage and culture.

Their voices, their courage, their resilience -- and their understanding -- offer hope for us all.

Customer Reviews:

Hurts, wounds, hopes and triumphs of growing up Black.......1999-06-12

Children Of The Dream A review by Gunter David Ft. Washington, PA

In the age of the status quo between black and white in American, when the races have social contact mainly at work, rarely at home, Children Of The Dream: Our Own Stories Of Growing Up Black In America makes a vital contribution. For how are we to know about each other, except by reading of inner thoughts and feelings, since most of us don't openly talk to each other?

This book is filled with memoirs of Afro-Americans struggling to come to terms with the color of their skin in a white world. But unlike other books having covered the same terrain, this volume describes the experiences of children, as told by adults looking back. The hurts, the wounds, but also the hopes and triumphs are recounted in the first person. They make for deeply personal stories, both revealing and informative.

Among the most moving is the very first in the book, "The Question" - a recollection by Arline Lorraine Piper of how her grandmother fed hungry white men during the Depression, when her own family had little to spare. "Sticks And Stones And Words And Bones" by Amitiyah Elayne Hyman, tells of relationships with white neighbors. There is sadness and a sense of loss in "My First Friend (My Blond-Haired, Blue-Eyed Linda)" by Marion Coleman Brown, on the theme of how children are taught to hate. And then there is "White Friends" by Bernestine Singley, a bitter indictment of both black and white social values.

The book is the latest in editor Laurel Holliday's "The Children Of The Conflict" series. Her introductions of each story beautifully set the scene. The pictures of the authors as children provide an illuminating touch.

A book of relevance to everyone who has experienced racism.......1999-05-19

As a reader from outside America, this book was a revelation about a society which has so much to offer the world and yet often sells its own citizens short. Anyone, black or white who has ever experienced racism anywhere in the world will recognise themselves in these stories. It would be invidious to name specific writers from the collection, there is not a bad story in it which is to the credit of all the contributors but also to the work of Laurel Holliday who has brought yet another fine collection of stories by ordinary people to the reading public. What makes this collection exceptional is that it deals not only with racism by whites oppressing blacks, but the equally significant evil of blacks who seek to denigrate their brothers and sisters for 'not being black enough'. This is something which is recognisable to all who live in areas of racial or sectarian conflict. I wish that this book could be made compulsory reading for every school child, along with previous Laurel Holliday collections dealing with Palestine/Israel, Ireland and the victims of WW2 and the Holocaust. Read this book, it really will change the way you think!

"ýout of the mouths of babes".......1999-04-02

Each essay spoke right to me. Some whispered and others shouted, but I knew exactly where the sound was coming from. Mind you, those hurts and slights may have happened quite awhile ago, but the memories seemed to have shaped (and are shaping) some extraordinary individuals. Will be giving this book to many people and genuinely hoarding my first edition copy.

These stories are literally our own. New voices, old truths........1999-03-29

Arline Lorraine Piper, author of the award-winning story, "The Question," in CHILDREN OF THE DREAM, captures the essence of the anthology in her extremely modest description of herself. "If I am at all extraordinary," she says, "it is in my willingness to expose my truth to myself, so that my truth can also be accessible to you. But this effort on my part to be ruthlessly honest with myself will only have full significance for you if it empowers you to the same honesty with yourself...." Welcome to the victors' tales, stories not merely of survival and overcoming, but of ultimately prevailing. With enormous range, across class, color, gender, age, lifestyles and experience, the stories in ruthless, honest remembering. For a nation suffering from collective amnesia where race is concerned, CHILDREN OF THE DREAM is a powerful cure. Sometimes funny, sometimes painful, sometimes subtle, sometimes in-your-face, each vignette is its own reminder of exactly how things on the race front got to be the way they are. This is a dialogue on race, voiced by people on the street, telling it the way it always has been and, regrettably, still is. CHILDREN OF THE DREAM is one more piece of evidence contradicting the popular, simplistic notion that there is one authentic Black experience. For instance, even though it happens to be my own story, not all African Americans grew up in single parent homes in the ghetto struggling to make ends meet. Dawn Bennett-Alexander's "(R)Evolution of Black and White" humorously, yet compellingly, makes just this point and Staajabu's "255 Sycamore Street" and Robert E. Penn's "War" go on to reinforce it. CHILDREN OF THE DREAM is a book for the entire family. Any young adult, for instance, can relate to the two 19-year old Bennett-Alexander sisters who share their experiences from markedly different perspectives in "The Black Experience" and "Betrayal in Black and White." When their baby sister, 9-year old Tess Alexandra, weighs in with her clear-eyed essay, "'Mixed' Emotions," even the youngest school-age child can hear and understand her voice. And as if that weren't enough, I dare you to remain unmoved after reading Antoine P. Reddick's brave but heartbreaking "All the Black Children" and then flip to Toure's "Blackmanwalkin," a young man's joyful tribute to his father. Finally, for those who think virulent racism is a thing of times past, apartheid lives well and prospers next door, on the bus, in school. Laurel Holliday has done something quite extraordinary. Once again, in this her last in the "Children of Conflict" series, she has stepped back and made it possible for readers to hear, without filters, the enormously varied voices of ordinary people speaking as the experts they are on growing up, in this instance, Black in America. CHILDREN OF THE DREAM offers readers the gift of entering the 21st century less ignorant, less divided, less mean-spirited, less smug, more generous, more hopeful, more sensitive, more empowered to face the clear and still present truth about racism's destruction. Make no mistake though. As one of the contributors to the anthology, I assure you that we do not point fingers, seek sympathy, or even threaten retribution. Rather, we have laid open pieces of our lives so you can see how we are all shaped, for good and bad, by the same forces. As with all gifts, you may take these or leave them. But for the wise ones, who desire a new, empowered, awakened way of racial being, the choice will be perfectly obvious

An intimate view of Black youth's struggle with racism.......1999-02-09

This is a must read for all people. Each story is a personal glimpse, on an intimate level with the struggle to survive in a racist society. Some stories made me laugh out loud and some brought tears to my eyes. I am one of the authors. I had no idea how many others had felt my pain. Wish I could purchase a book for everybody I know.

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