Overcoming Challenges

Overcoming Challenges: What's Bad to You Isn't Always Bad for You is an autobiographical journey about the long-term impact of the struggles a female faces from a teenager into adulthood, but she eventually learns not only the hard way but the long and wrong way. Eldona talks about the financial struggles she experienced as a teenager, such as living without utilities simultaneously, and how boys and men took advantage of her because she did not have the protection of her father, which resulted in the birth of her firstborn. She talks about her struggles as a single parent, her exposure to AIDS, and her experience as a USC student. It includes her poem "Why Should I Suffer?" which is based on her teaching experience in the inner city and exposes the true reasons students fail. She completes her autobiography full circle, ending with marrying her teenage sweetheart after being separated for twenty-five years and starting over, giving birth to a baby boy in her early forties!