African American Girls: Reframing Perceptions and Changing Experiences

Over the past 15 years, I have had the opportunityto conduct research and interv- tion programming with African American girls. Several of my graduate students, mostly African American women, pursuing their doctorates in psychology worked closely with me in this work. We have conducted hundreds of literature reviews, read many journal articles and reports, published many papers, and engaged over a thousand African American adolescent girls in a cultural curriculum speci?cally designed for them. This book was written to summarize this work and was c- ceived to be an educational resource for diverse audiences who work with African American girls including: (1) researchers who conduct research and intervention programming; (2) professionals who work with African American adolescent girls such as teachers, social workers, prevention specialists, therapists and counselors, and mental health workers; and (3) a general audience of persons with an interest in African American adolescent female's well-being and developmentsuch as parents, community leaders, girl's group leaders (i. e., Girl Scout leaders), and church and spiritual leaders. This book is both descriptive and practical. Each chapter covers the most current literature on African American adolescent girls, and reviews and discusses ways in which they are similar to and unique from girls in other ethnic groups and from African American boys. An understanding of who they are and how they function allows us to make recommendations about ways to support these girls and to re- cus and/or strengthen already positive attributes.

Faye Z. Belgrave has developed, implemented, and evaluated cultural programs for African American girls for more than 15 years. These programs have been implemented collaboratively with local community partners. Participants in these programs have shown increases in self attributes, positive values and relationships, and have developed life skills to resist negative behaviors. Dr. Belgrave is professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University and co-author of a textbook on African American Psychology.