FOREWORD

TEEN SISTERS' HEALTH A Body, Mind, & Spirit Wellness Guide for Girls of Color Linda Bradley, MD,  & M. LaVora Perry Tell A Friend	SEARCH      SITE MAP	FOREWORD  by Charlise Lyles, Author and Newsmagazine Editor PDF   Get Adobe Reader  to read PDF files
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When I was 14-years-old going on 30, trying to skateboard down the often bumpy avenue of African-American adolescence, I wish I’d had a book like Teens Sisters’ Health: An African American Girl’s Wellness Guide for  Body, Mind, & Spirit.

Why? Because I yearned to learn everything you’ll find in Book 1, Part 1, Chapters 1-4: “Loving Your Heritage, Body, Skin & Hair.” You see, the kinky, brown nest of an afro that framed my yellowish, freckly face convinced me that I was an ugly oddball compared to my TV heroines. Let’s just say, I was no Beyoncé. 

I wish I could’ve had the practical guidance and sound medical information you’ll get when you read “Your Monthly ‘Friend’—Everything You Wanted to Know About Menstruation…” in Book 1, Chapter 5 of Teen Sisters' Health. All I knew was once that “friend” showed up, my stomach and hips ached with cramps so severe that I didn’t feel up to playing kick ball. And what’s more, each month, before my period started, I’d catch an unbearable bad attitude, feeling moody and sassy for a whole week. 

And, you know what? I wish my mother had had a book like this, too. To guide her through the awkward and tense moments between mother and daughter when a maturing body and raging hormones rule.

Dee Dee, the neighborhood bully, often tried to introduce me to smoking cigarettes under the stairwell in the hallway of Building A11 in the Cleveland, Ohio low-income neighborhood where I grew up, what we called the “the projects” back then.  At those times, I wish I could have turned to Book 1 of Teen Sisters’ Health for the advice in the introduction to Part 1: “If you don’t smoke, don’t start— even if kids around you and billboard and magazine ads make smoking seem cool.” In my case, although Dee Dee threatened weekly to “kick my butt” over nothing, somehow I managed to summon up enough will power to resist her invitation to the lifetime of hygiene and health issues that come with smoking.

One day when I was waiting at the bus stop on E. 93^rd Street on the way to my summer job, a man offered me $20 if I let him do “the nasty” to me. I ran, terrified, down the street to the next bus stop. I wish that I could’ve run to Book 5, Chapter 32 of Teen Sisters’ Health, “Predators & Violence—Keeping Them Out of Your Life.” It would’ve provided me with useful advice and the chutzpah I needed to rise above, reject, and report anybody out to cut my girlhood short by violating my body.

During those years between junior high and high school graduation, when my girlfriends confided in me about everything from pregnancy and abortion to sexually transmitted infections, I would’ve relished digging into Books 2 to 4, Parts 4 to 6 of this book. Instead, I relied on flimsy pamphlets from the local health department with sparsely worded advice and bad cartoons. I probably didn’t help my friends much.

But because of a labor of love from the Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Linda Bradley, an obstetrician and gynecologist for 25 years, and her co-author M. LaVora Perry, African-American young women like you now have what I wish I’d had, Teen Sisters’ Health, a book that breaks it all down.

Love yourself. Believe in yourself. Take care of yourself. Teen Sisters’ Health will empower you to do all these things and more. Take it from the part of me that remembers my 14 year-old self—a girl like you needs a book like this. 

Charlise Lyles is the author of the soon to be re-released memoir, From the Projects to Prep School—Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?”, and the Editor of Catalyst Ohio, an independent newsmagazine reporting on urban schools.

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