Discover the past, understand the present, and begin to heal.
About the Author
Janie Victoria Ward is Professor Emerita at Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts, where she served as Chair of the Departments of Education and Africana Studies. She holds a master’s degree in Counseling and Consulting Psychology and a doctorate in Human Development from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
For more than thirty years, Janie has written about the challenges, strengths, and lived experiences of African American young adults. Her research has been featured in national media, and she has worked closely with youth counselors, educators, college faculty, staff, and administrators.
Now living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Janie is writing a memoir about the house she grew up in—a home located in a place where Black people were not supposed to be. As a child, she saw the house as crooked, outdated, and uneven; both a shelter and a burden. But when a historical plaque honoring a civil rights pioneer was installed in front of her childhood home, it sparked a journey of discovery and transformation.
Her memoir explores how uncovering buried histories can turn childhood shame into adult pride. At its heart, it is a story about restorative history-telling, personal healing, and the power of the past to mend present-day wounds.
Published Books
Sister Resisters: Mentoring Black Women on Campus
Sister Resisters advances a robust model of mentorship in support of young Black women on campus. The book offers a multifaceted approach to cross-racial mentoring in higher education that promises growth and change for both mentees and their mentors.
The Skin We're In: Teaching Our Teens To Be Emotionally Strong, Socially Smart, and Spiritually Connected
This bookOffers positive parenting techniques for guiding young African American children through adolescence, exploring obstacles to creating positive identities, healthy resistance strategies, and the roles of school and church.
Gender and Teaching
Gender and Teaching provides a vivid, focused, and interactive overview of important gender issues in education today. This is aocomphshed through conversations among experts, practitioners, and readers that are informed by representative case studies and by a range of theoretical approaches to the issues
Souls Looking Back (1999)
This collection of sixteen autobiographical essays by African-Americans, Africans in America, Afro-Caribbean and biracial college students who have tackled significant obstacles to achieve success and degrees of self-understanding offers a broader, more hopeful portrait of the adolescent experiences of minority youth.
Coming Soon…
"Crooked in Cambridge: A Memoir of Shame and Redemption”
A memoir exploring and uncovering buried histories that turns childhood shame into adult pride. At its heart, it is a story about restorative history-telling, personal healing, and the power of the past to mend present-day wounds.