The Courage to Be Yourself: True Stories by Teens About Cliques, Conflicts, and Overcoming Peer Pressure - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1575421852 ISBN 13: 9781575421858

Publisher: Free Spirit Publishing, 2005

Synopsis

Cassandra is hassled by her friends for sitting with the “wrong” kids at lunch. Jennifer gets harassed because she’s overweight. Dwan’s own family taunts her for not being “black enough.” Yen is teased for being Chinese; Jamel for not smoking marijuana. Yet all find the strength to face their conflicts and the courage to be themselves. In 26 first-person stories, real teens write about their lives with searing honesty. They will inspire young readers to reflect on their own lives, work through their problems, and learn who they really are.

About this title

About the Author:

Al Desetta, M.A., is an editor at Youth Communication, a New York-based nonprofit organization that teaches writing, journalism, and leadership skills to inner-city teens. Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR) is a national nonprofit organization whose mission is to make teaching social responsibility a core practice in education so that young people develop the convictions and skills to shape a safe, sustainable, democratic, and just world.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 8 Up–It's a challenge to remain true to one's self in a world that encourages conformity to a narrowly prescribed norm. It is especially difficult when the individual is a teen. Here, Desetta presents 26 short essays from young people who have faced this challenge head-on and found ways to survive if not happily, at least tolerably. From a gay teen who is harassed by peers to overweight and unfashionable girls who are ridiculed because of their physical appearance; from an African-American teen who isn't black enough to an Arab American who is a target of hate after September 11, the selections cover the spectrum of being different or other. What the essays have in common is the willingness on the part of the contributors to accept that they cannot control how others view them but only how they perceive themselves. These young people demonstrate that by having the courage to be themselves, they are equipped to live without compromising their ideals. Though not all the stories have happy endings, readers who are struggling with similar issues will be comforted and perhaps inspired by the honesty and poignancy of these narratives.–Elaine Baran Black, Gwinnett County Public Library, Lawrenceville, GA
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About this edition

• Publisher: Free Spirit Publishing
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1575421852
• ISBN 13: 9781575421858
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 156
• Editor: Al Desetta