Book excerpt: African-American Stories of Triumph Over Adversity is about ordinary people, born into poverty, violence and abuse, who have forged a path through the dense forest of life. Along the way, they learned to build upon their experiences to create a better way of life for themselves. Their voices are at once personal and political for they speak about the impact of the experience of family, school and community on their emerging self, as well as the psycho-social turmoil created living in a society where the color of one's skin defines one's place in the social order. These are stories of triumph of the human spirit. They are stories of faith, hope, love, strong-will and determination. As one storyteller found, if a person can take the worst thing that could happen to them in life and see that as an event and not their entire life, success will always be on the horizon.