A Reading Of Essays By African-American Youth

BRIDGEPORT — Fifty African-American scholars stare out from the pages of a striking new coffee table book, their faces, their words, and their accomplishments combining to send clichés about black academic achievement to the trash bin.

Such is the power of I Have Risen: Essays by African-American Youth. Published by the CAP Charitable Foundation to commemorate the tenth anniversary of its Ron Brown Scholar Program, the book is a compilation of wisdom, promise, inspiration and courage.

The authors were high school students when they wrote the essays, a routine step in overcoming extraordinary disadvantages – homelessness, poverty and broken families dismantled by drugs, prison and death. Despite such odds, each essayist managed to earn admission to a select college or university and a $40,000 commitment from the Ron Brown Scholar Program, which is named for the late commerce secretary.

Several Ron Brown scholars will read from and sign copies of their book on Monday, August 28, at the Bridgeport North Branch Library & Community Center. The North Branch is located at 3455 Madison Avenue and the event, starting at 6 pm with refreshments, will be held in the Community Room.

The essayists will read at 7 pm and be available to sign copies of the book afterwards. Free and open to the public, the event is hosted by the library’s Board of Directors and its Friends of the Library organization.

“I loved reading the essays of these talented young minds,” said Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr, about the book. “By offering means for advancement to promising students who have known poverty, [the program] brings us one step closer to proving that this disparity is neither natural nor necessary.”

More information about the book, the writers, and the Ron Brown Scholar Program is available at RonBrown.org. For additional information about the readings, contact Michael Bielawa, community relations librarian at Bridgeport Public Library, 203-576-7413.