Joyce A. Ladner

Joyce A. Ladner spent four years interviewing, observing, and socializing with more than a hundred girls living in the Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis. She was challenged by preconceived academic ideas and labels and by her own past as a black child in rural Mississippi. Rejecting the white middle-class perspective of "deviant" behavior, she examined the expectations and aspirations of these representative black girls and their feelings about parents and boyfriends, marriage, pregnancy, and child-rearing. Ladner asked what life was like in the urban black community for the "average" girl, how she defined her roles and behaviors, and where she found her role models. She was interested in any significant disparity between aspirations and the resources to achieve them. To what extent did the black teenager share the world of her white peers? If the questions were searching, the conclusions were provocative. According to Ladner, "The total misrepresentation of the Black community and the various myths which surround it can be seen in microcosm in the Black female adolescent." Joyce A. Ladner is acting president of Howard University and the author of Mixed Families: Adopting across Racial Boundaries. She is the editor, with Peter Edelman, of Adolescence and Poverty: Challenge for the '90s.

The Black Woman

Tomorrow's Tomorrow

Modes of Adaptation

On Becoming a Woman in the Ghetto

Present-day psycho-social study of low income black American girls in large metropolitan centers and a look at the conditions of black womanhood in the past

Essays on Race and Culture

The Death of White Sociology

Theresa Foy DiGeronimo

Launching Our Black Children for Success is a groundbreaking book that goes beyond the typical "how to get your kid into the best school or college" advice. This extraordinary book takes black parents step-by-step through the stages of child development so they can build a solid foundation for success in their children. It shows how to best instill pride, self-discipline, social skills, a work ethic, and a way to deal with the inevitable racism and prejudice their children will face. Authors Joyce Ladner and Theresa Foy DiGeronimo also offer a practical guide for overcoming the many injustices and obstacles African American families face and show how to shepherd their kids through the process that is required to help children keep their "eyes on the prize." Launching Our Black Children for Success helps parents to provide the strength and the strategies their children need to seek out whatever career they dream of and deserve.

Joyce A. Ladner

About

Books

Join the club