From the Soul: Stories of Great Black Parents and the Lives They Gave Us. (nonfiction reviews).

From the Soul: Stories of Great Black Parents and the Lives They Gave Us by Phyllis Y. Harris G.P. Putnam's Sons, October 2001, $24.95 ISBN 0-399-14706-3

When I was a child, my mother did not allow me to go readily into the homes of my friends who lived next door or across the street--even if another mother invited me in for a cool drink or a snack. Other kids could make this journey and get a sense of the nuances of other parents and their ways. Since I could not go, I did the next best thing, and like a voyeur, I would cup my hands around my eyes and peek through the windows of playmates that had been called away. That was my way of seeing how other kids and their parents interacted, my way of sneaking a peek to see how my friends became the people they were.

That's what Phyllis Y. Harris has done in From the Soul She traces the upbringing of blacks, some born and raised in the United States and others in South Africa and Jamaica; Harris then gives the reader a peek into the lives of ten individuals, who she describes as privileged blacks, making it in America because their forebearers sacrificed their goals to knock down barriers and to pave a smoother trail for their children to follow. Each person vividly recalls how they were raised and the particular life lessons they learned from their parents.

From the child, now an adult, raised by freedom-fighting parents to tales of childrearing based on faith and perseverance in the times of Jim Crow, most of the essays with an average length of twenty-plus pages will make you "work" to extract valuable life lessons. But, if you are a parent in search of other perspectives on successful childrearing, or someone who wants to sample different families' lives, then From The Soul is a book well worth the toil.

Tina Jenkins Bell is a freelance writer living in Chicago, Illinois.