Every Step You Take: A Teenager's Journey

Joseph M. Alicea

Dec 2003 · Author House

About this ebook

Every Step You Take is a hard-hitting focus on inner city survival from a kids perspective. Using his life in New Yorks Spanish Harlem and South Bronx, Joseph Alicea provides readers with true-life examples that speak to the successes and failures of teenagers. Joes stories communicate directly with young readers. His secondary intent is to share these experiences with parents, hoping that they use them as a means for discussing critical growing up issues with their children. Joe links his message through the paths he took as an example of how every step you take will define your Character, Future, and Legacy. Portions of the text may seem too direct. However, Joes intent is not to preach. He firmly believes that young readers need to hear the words as he intended them passionate, honest, to the point, and with a sense of caring for them. He wants young readers to recognize the fact that many kids go through tough and confusing times just as they may be having; yet those kids survive. He also hopes that his frank discussions will encourage parents to be as forthright with their children about their own experiences as he has been in his book.

About the author

Joseph Alicea was born in New York City and was raised in areas known as Spanish Harlem and the South Bronx. Those were neighborhoods whose streets, parks, schools, and apartment buildings existed in perpetual decline. Sadly, most visitors suspected the inhabitants themselves were in equal decline. Whatever promise, if any, the future held for kids growing up in those ghettos was questionable; survival was their first priority. Joe and many of his friends took the best out of every experience from school, family, friendships, and the streets. They took control of their lives. They are survivors. Joe left New York City and joined the U.S. Air Force. Along the way, he earned a BS in Aeronautical Sciences and an MS in Business Management. He went from Enlisted man to Officer and traveled with his family around the world to places they had only dreamed of while living in the Bronx. Over the last twenty years, Joe has demonstrated a selfless commitment to mentoring programs for young adults. He has spent countless hours with middle and high school children in Europe and the United States counseling, teaching, coaching, and helping them understand that they too can reach for the stars.