Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?: From the Projects to Prep School

Charlise Lyles was born in 1959, on the cusp of a new era for African-Americans. She came of age as the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy stirred blacks and whites to right the racial wrongs of the past, although their individual voices had been silenced. In this vivid memoir, Lyles describes how the programs and policies that emerged from the civil rights movement affected her and her family.
Lyles watched as race riots and a river burned in Cleveland. When the ashes cooled, her family was one of the first to move into Cleveland's King-Kennedy Homes public housing project in 1969. Through the eyes of childhood and adolescence, Lyles portrays their years there against a backdrop of weekly black militant demonstrations, the rise and fall of Cleveland's first black mayor, and mounting violence and despair.
At the same time, she traces her ascent from "the slow class" to an elite suburban prep school, showing how programs from Head Start to A Better Chance could open doors for those with the good fortune to find them and the courage to go through. Finally, Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? shares Lyles's search for her long absent father, a quest that culminates in confusion and enlightenment, anger and love.
Do I Dare Disturb the Universe? shows how the triumphs and failures of the civil rights era converged in Lyles's life while drawing a compelling portrait of the girl she was and the woman she became.

Charlise Lyles was born in Cleveland in 1959. She is an alumna of Hawken Upper School, the A Better Chance program, and a 1981 graduate of Smith College. Lyles is the co-founding editor of Catalyst Cleveland, now Catalyst Ohio magazine, which analyzes urban school improvement issues. Under Lyle’s leadership, Catalyst twice won a Clarion Award from the national Association of Women in Communication as well as awards from the Ohio Society for Professional Journalists and the Press Club of Cleveland. In 2009, Lyles was a finalist for a National Association of Black Journalists commentary award. In 2008 she was selected as a Fellow in the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs/Jouralism at the John Glenn School at The Ohio State University. After ten years, Lyles left Catalyst in 2009 to pursue other ventures in eduation equality and creative writing. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia.