“My own yesterdays were, for a long time, unfortunate
things I deemed better forgotten, left behind in the tired
old dust of old apartments along with blackened
pennies and worn crumbled photographs. I would shut
the dark away . . . And yet I could not deny the existence
of those dark times,” writes Caprice Gray, a youth
from New York City, in her essay about the role writing
played in her life. “Writing was a way to escape, to
free myself from that familiar choke-hold so endemic to
the crumbling inner city tenement building. . . . I could
forget the hunger that seemed to fold the two sides
of my stomach together sometimes when the welfare check
ran out and the kitchen shelves sat smooth and empty. . . .
It was my pen that turned my mourning into song
when my sweet-faced cousin was murdered and left to
leak his life out on the ice-laced streets of the Baltimore
inner city, staining the frozen gutters that deep color
of roses we never saw bloom.”
So opens this inspiring and moving collection of essays
written by a group of African-American youth. When
they wrote the essays, they were in the process of applying
to the Ron Brown Scholar Program, a selective college
scholarship fund that rewards black youth for excellence in
academia, commitment to community service, and
leadership potential. Smart, thoughtful, and determined,
they went on to win the scholarships and become
Ron Brown Scholars. Most of them are now studying at
prestigious universities throughout the country. This
volume is a commemoration of the tenth anniversary of
the founding of the Ron Brown Scholar Program,
and a celebration of the spirit and achievements of the
Scholars.
Most of the youth featured in this book have overcome
great challenges – racial, economic, and familial.
In that vein, many of their essays are reflections on the
state of the world as they lived it, suffered it, and,
in fact, conquered and embraced it. Most importantly,
I Have Risen is a collection of stories about transcending
the cards dealt to us by fate and turning them on
their heads. It is, in great African-American tradition,
about standing up and overcoming.
“Hovering over my shoulders like a dark rain-laden cloud,
this was the history that I once wanted to fold away and
forget,” concludes the essay by Caprice, a 2004 Ron
Brown Scholar who is studying at Yale. “But I now know
that it is that very history that has made me stronger,
that has molded me into what I am today.”
As Jessica Larché, a 2003 Scholar, writes in her compelling
piece from which the title is derived, “Each of the adversities
I have encountered, whether due to race, financial
trouble, or lack of a conventional family, is an ingredient
of the conglomeration that makes me who I am.
Despite these setbacks . . . I consider myself to be the
anti-stereotype, for I have risen above low expectations
and exceeded my wildest dreams.”
Each of these essays has its own voice and its own tale,
and each is as unique as the remarkable Ron Brown
Scholar who wrote it.
Follow them as they share a glimpse of their world,
and be inspired.
CLICK HERE TO READ AN ESSAY FROM THE BOOK
