Constructing Social Reality: Self Portraits of Poor Black Adolescents

This book examines how black children who grow up in an impoverished environment construct their social reality, and why this process is a particularly critical factor in their perception and creation of self. It argues that black disadvantaged children develop a lifestyle and adopt values based on an identity grounded in racism, inequality, violence and poverty. "Constructing Social Reality: Self Portraits of Poor Black Adolescents" makes a valuable contribution to the scholarship by investigating the phenomena of poverty from cognitive, linguistic, and experiential perspectives in the lives of disadvantaged black adolescents.

Loretta J. Brunions is the Director of Alternative Safe Schools and Programs for the Chicago Public School System.