PHD to PH.D. (BOOK REVIEW)
PHD to Ph.D.
How Education Saved My Life
by Dr. Elaine Richardson
New
City Community Press
Paperback, $22.95
264 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9840429-7-5
Book
Review by Kam Williams
“Elaine Richardson grew
up in a poverty stricken area of Cleveland, Ohio
to her Jamaican mother and American father. Being raped at 13, she became involved with what basically
amounted to the same abusive boyfriend
over and over again.
She also became a
teen-aged and then adult prostitute, drug addict,
and single mother. Addicted to drugs, abusive controlling pimps, the streets, short stints in jail, the cycle
of death that was her life, and on top
of that, pregnant again.
It was the end. The only
way out was death or prison, but that wasn’t
her fate. Instead, she went to school… and never stopped. On her journey, she became empowered with
knowledge of her culture and history.
Today,
Dr. Elaine Richardson shares her story of sexual exploitation and other forms of bondage to promote
healing and empowerment through education.
Her story is about going from a Po’ Ho on Dope to a Ph.D.”
-- Excerpted from the Introduction (pages
5-6)
Dr. Elaine
Richardson encountered a host of horrors practically from birth. That’s because
she was raised on a rough side of Cleveland
in a seedy apartment where she recalls seeing a rat scamper across the floor as
a toddler.
Growing up,
she was teased mercilessly about both her lips and her weight by cruel kids in
the neighborhood who called her everything from ‘liver lips’ to ‘rubber lips’
to ‘bubble lips’ to ‘chub’ to ‘fat girl.’ And soon after reaching puberty, she lost
her virginity when she was raped while just in junior high school.
That sexual
assault, which left the 13 year-old pregnant, was only the start of a deep descent
into depravity that would be marked by pimps, prostitution, drug addiction,
incarceration and single-motherhood. She eventually bottomed out but was able
to turn her life around before her future was swallowed up by the streets entirely.
That admirable
transformation is the subject of PHD to Ph.D., an inspirational autobiography
chronicling Elaine’s very unlikely transformation from a self-described “Po Ho’
on Dope” to a Ph.D. and professor at Ohio
State University.
This heartbreaking cautionary tale is tailor-made for at-risk girls since the
author recounts her tragic experiences in a gripping and graphic fashion which
leaves little to the imagination.
Crediting
God and her supportive mother for putting her on the road to recovery, Elaine
nevertheless acknowledges that she’s still healing and learning to love herself
after all the years of abuse. A remarkable memoir by a remarkable survivor who miraculously
managed to beat the odds!
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