Diversity: Poems About Life's Difference

Carrie C. Riley-Johnson was born to Robert and Mattie Mae Riley, in Los Angeles, California on April 23, 1949. Carrie has one sister, Mary Ann Riley-Johnson of Ringgold, Louisiana and one brother, Robert Joe Riley of Hawthorne, California. She remembers her family as loving and supportive. Other than Carrie's immediate family; her great aunt, Maggie Iverson, born April 18, 1894, was most influential in transmitting the family's history. The stories Maggie told Carrie helped her to understand the circumstances of the Descendants of the African Slaves' plight, as she talked with Aunt Maggie nearly every week or so of her adult life. She came to realize that even those descendants embraced diversity. Carrie enjoys reading history and cultural humanitarian stories. Her hobbies are writing and editing books and poetry. For example: She worked as an editing consultant on "The Last Remnants of Slavery: An African American Dilemma", a most recent book written and published by Arthur J. Stovall, Ph.D.

Carrie attended public schools in the suburbs of California cities. She is a graduate of Redlands University in Redlands, California, and California Polytechnic University in Pomona, California. She holds a Master of Arts in Management and a Bachelor in Humanities English. She was the first of three children to obtain a college degree. For more than 30 years in the workforce, Carrie worked for major corporations as manager of procedural writing, manager and director of internal auditing; and as a paralegal and office manager.

This is not her first time writing and publishing poetry. One of her most popular poems, "Destiny" is published in the book entitled: "Poetry in Motion", by The Poetry Guild in 1998 (Page 186).