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PHD to Ph.D.: How Education Saved My Life

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"There was a time when Elaine Richardson was one of 'the Negroes everybody pointed to as the Negroes you didn't want to become.' The title of this book is no metaphor or allusion, but a literal shorthand for a remarkable, unpredictable journey. She inherits a plain way of talking about horrific pain from a mother who seemed impossible to shock. The way too fast way she grew up was and is too common, but her will to remap her destiny is uncommon indeed. To call her story inspiring would be itself too plain a thing, hers is a heroic life." -dream Hampton, writer and filmmaker | ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ELAINE RICHARDSON, Professor of Literacy Studies in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University, is focused on literacy education of African American and African diasporic people, and specializes in critical language and literacy education for social equality. RICHARDSON belongs to a global network of Hiphop activist-educators for social transformation. Richardson founded The Ohio State University Hiphop Literacies Conference and the SistaFriends Afterschool Program in 2011 (currently serving sixth to eighth grade girls at Sherwood Middle school). RICHARDSON uses her story of recovery from human trafficking and drugs to becoming an award winning PhD and recording artist to motivate others. RICHARDSON'S bachelor's and master's degrees are from Cleveland State University and her doctorate from Michigan State University. She has won awards from the National Council of Negro Women, City of Columbus, and Cleveland State University, and other organizations.

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First published March 30, 2013

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Elaine Richardson

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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
Profile Image for Mariah Roze.
1,057 reviews1,054 followers
January 22, 2016
This book was great!! I finished half of it in one day! So captivating!!! I suggest this book to everyone! Especially anyone that loves autobiographies like me!
Profile Image for Kate.
18 reviews
July 22, 2013
Dr. Elaine Richardson writes with gut-wrenching authenticity, and you are captured as a reader from the start. This memoir is like none I've read before. If you are not moved, inspired, changed, or impacted in some way after reading this book, you need to check your pulse. Nothing I've read better illustrates the life of the streets, the poisonous, pervasive racism of our country, and the wretched outcomes that come about for our children. But her story is one of hope, and that's why this book is worth reading. I know Dr. E, and she is a woman full of love and life, and that love and life shine through in her story. And if you are an educator, read this book to remember why you do what you do. PhD to PH.D. How Education Saved My Life by Elaine Richardson
Profile Image for Ebony.
Author 8 books207 followers
May 13, 2013
I really want to thank Dr. Elaine Richardson for writing this book. As I was reading, I made a mental list of all the girls/women, with whom I wanted to share it—willful teens starting to feel the pull of the streets, the mothers of those willful teen at their wits ends, other women professors dedicating their lives to black expression, friends afraid to share their life stories. Richardson is a testament to possibility. Each page reminds me that humanity is so resilient. My heart hurt every time she was beaten, dismissed, disrespected. I rooted for her every time she decided to do something different. I wanted her to win and I kept reading not to see if she would (I mean, the title gives that away), but because I wanted to see how she would tell the story. Richardson makes it plain. Whether it’s Jamaican patios or academic jargon—she lays her entire life in plain English on the page. And by plain English, I don’t mean just the way white people talk. I loved that she used black dialect throughout her entire story. Quite frankly, I dug those moments where I thought, “oh, that’s how you spell booyahkah.” The story also isn’t generically happy ever after. She overcomes some trials and then she has some more like real women’s lives. Her honesty is refreshing. The book is also powerful in its naming of pain. Nonconsensual sex is always rape. Pimping/prostituting teenagers is human trafficking. She calls out all the spades in such an important way without glorifying her past or shaming women who are still on the streets. She’s spiritual, but this isn’t a preachy book. She didn’t wait for God to save her—she decided to work at a new future for herself and her daughters. Respect that. Read this book and know that if you want it, you can have it too. I am definitely passing on my copy. I hope the cover and pages end up dog-eared and damaged as it’s passed from one woman’s hand to another as they read her story and feel empowered to share their own.
Profile Image for CatReader.
1,048 reviews192 followers
February 12, 2025
Dr. Elaine Richardson is a professor of literacy studies at the Ohio State University. In her memoir PHD ("Po H# on Dope") to PhD: How Education Saved My Life, she recounts her rocky adolescence and twenties, which included being sex trafficked for years beginning as a young teen, battling substance addiction, and coping with the untimely deaths of many people close to her who had worked alongside her on the streets. In her early 30s with three young daughters, Dr. Richardson got sober, went back to college, and ultimately earned a PhD from Michigan State University, though as a Black student, her educational journey was far from easy as she felt marginalized by how the educational system devalued Black voices and perspectives as they weren't presented in the same way as academic English. As she writes:

Black people's ways of talking was not sloppy, broken, or a bunch of mistakes. Our language styles began in West African language styles. When our various 'masters' forced our ancestors to take on their languages in the Caribbean, the Americas, or Europe we gave those languages a serious make-over and made them fit us!...How come nobody ever taught us this? My previous educational kept me in the dark on my language. If you don't feel good about your language or value it, you can't possibly feel good about yourself Your language is your heart, your brain, your family, your history.


To wit, Dr. Richardson writes in many literary dialects in the book, including her mother's Jamaican vernacular, to enrich the sociocultural experiences she's had.

This memoir exemplifies a great deal of personal growth and the ability to sublimate very challenging experiences into productive outputs. I would have loved to read more about Dr. Richardson's academic career, particularly pre-tenure -- this part is only covered briefly in the last chapter.

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Profile Image for Richard Schur.
17 reviews
June 20, 2013
Powerful and compelling memoir! Stayed up until 2:00 am reading it.
Profile Image for Melanie Page.
Author 4 books89 followers
February 4, 2016
For me, it’s been a long time between finishing this book and writing the review—about two weeks. I always have something to say about a book, but am careful to write an outline and decide which pages I want to point to and quote. But this book has almost scared me out of writing anything. I met Elaine Richardson at an education conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she was a keynote speaker. She was electric, charming, and intelligent in a way that intimidated me despite my own schooling and experience as an adjunct professor. When she signed my book, she was very kind and wrote, “Melanie, thanks for teaching and loving! Dr. E.”

PHD to Ph.D. is Richardson’s memoir about growing up a black girl in Cleveland. She writes briefly about her parents, a mother from Jamaica with very little education and a father who played with Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith, though he was never famous (7). Richardson has some girlfriends who help her get into trouble when she is a girl, and later starts dating a much older boy, which is when things get drastically worse. He begins using her as a prostitute, and Richardson ends up prostituting until she is about 27. She has a baby with one of her pimps, and another baby whose father she doesn’t know. On many occasions, Richardson almost dies. When she finally gets things together and decides to go back to school, she never could have imagined how education would save her from certain death. The book is a compulsive read, but isn’t balanced evenly between being a drugged-out prostitute and a college student.

Richardson made me care about the people in her memoir. Her father isn’t written about much, but I still remember how cool he was in his old neighborhood. Richardson writes that her father dressed “gangsta style. When he wasn’t going to work, he wore his brim broke down and carried his pool stick in a long black case….His pool shootin friends called him ‘Bullwhip shawty from section 40’…” (5). Her father was a Black Muslim, like Malcolm X, and he had a “Black name” (meaning his Muslim name): Gulam Jameel Abdul-Rasheed (7). Richardson remembers how she felt about her father: “[My brother and me] cracked up at that name. We didn’t know any better. Daddy was also into something called Mentalphysics. He had his books and encyclopedias in a special place in the living room and couldn’t nobody touch em!” (7). Richardson’s dad is a textured guy: gangsta, pool shooter, musician, Black Muslim, reader, and I liked how memorable he was. I also like that Richardson maintains her childish voice: it’s “mentalphysics” as she remembers it, instead of “metaphysics.”

Her mother, too, was a vivid presence, though she is mentioned a lot more than the father. It really stuck with me that when Richardson was on a drugs and prostituting that her mother would call the police anytime she saw her daughter on the streets (141). The mother doesn’t necessarily want her daughter in trouble, but kept from dying.

Richardson herself is someone I care about, even when she makes terrible choices and I want to dislike her. While it may sound like Richardson writes herself in a sympathetic light, I didn’t find that to be the case. People live their lives and survive as best they can, period. Richardson describes herself as a girl: “I was a good kid. I played violin in the orchestra, sang in the choir, I was in the smart kids’ reading group, I was outgoing” (24). But, she’s also tormented, made fun of: “Other names people called me were chub, fat girl, liver lips, rubber lips, and bubble lips” (21). Down and down her sense of self-worth goes, and Richardson knows it’s important to connect her self-esteem to becoming a prostitute.

In 7th grade (about age 12) she is a victim of statutory rape and becomes pregnant. Her mother helps her procure an abortion, and Richardson reflects on it. She realizes she shouldn’t have hung out with girls who “knew” more than her, and she shouldn’t have gone into a room with a boy who was 19, because that meant that you wanted to have sex. She says she didn’t know these things at the time (43). We all know that hanging out with the cool, fast girls is a way to heal our broken self-esteem.

But, her new boyfriend, Andrew, understands nothing, and when they have intercourse, he comments on how “loose” she is. Richardson breaks my heart when she writes, “I had had an abortion in the second trimester. The baby I would have had was developed. Whatever the size of my vagina, it was the way it was because I had had a dead baby. All he talked about was how huge I was down there” (43). While dating Andrew, who is 17, Richardson continues to go to junior high, where she loves to learn. She is leading a double life of intelligent girl at school, and girl with poor self-esteem hanging out with older boys who pay attention to her. Andrew eventually convinces Richardson that if she loves him she will work the street, and he becomes her pimp.

I learned that pimps have favorite “hos” and treat that prostitute almost like a girlfriend. When Richardson has intercourse with her second pimp, AC, she knows that she feels nothing from sex. She believes it might be her experience in 7th grade or from having turned tricks for a while already, but it’s like she’s dead inside to sexual relationships (98). I felt terrible when I read her assessment. Sexual intimacy is so important, but Richardson doesn’t feel it anywhere in the book because sex is disconnected from love and partnership.

Richardson still has dreams, even when she’s drugged out and working as a prostitute for pimp #3, Mack. They plan to save enough money to open a legitimate jewelry store, and it makes sense to her 19-year-old mind (139). But not much later, Richardson is stabbed while escorting a trick (158). It’s hard to read about the author nearly getting herself killed, and later almost abducted by a serial murderer/rapist (170), but juxtaposed with her dreams, the whole story created sympathy in me. This is a woman who was broken as a girl, and she has no idea how to fix it.

Almost all of PHD to Ph.D. is written in various dialects. I love the authenticity this adds to the story. For instance, the black community in Cleveland makes fun of people who aren’t from the city, and readers get a great dose of dialect: “Dat county ass nigga got dem big ass white wall tires, dat funny ass cucaracha horn and got da nerve to have air shocks on that raggedy ass green car. Dat’s a country muthafucka right dere” (20). Some people in the book use more slang that others; not every sentence is written like the previous example. Remember, Richardson’s mother is Jamaican: “Mi ago kill yuh. Yuh nuh want nuttin from life? Before I mek a dutty nigga ruin yah life, mi will kill yuh mi-self and walk downtown and tell the dyam police is mi kill yuh” (75). Richarson’s grad school advisor, also a black woman, tells her, “You have to stay in da library. You have to know the field like the back of your hand. Knowwhatumsayin? You cain’t sing upon dis Ph.D. You have to read, write and research up on dis bad boy” (233). By getting how people talk and think in those people’s own words, Richardson gives voices to those who are often told they’re wrong. Black folks in the book, from the educated to the illiterate, have a voice they’re told is “wrong” because it doesn’t sound white.

Getting back into college after drugs and turning tricks happens quickly; in fact, I have to comb through my memory to remember how she got herself clean, into support groups, and to Cleveland State University. Everything about Richardson as a girl and later prostitute made me a compulsive reader. I couldn’t put this book down! But everything about school seems rushed and not as clearly thought out. Indeed, she goes to college on page 192, but the book is only 251 total pages. Things start out interestingly; Richardson is told she needs a lot of help with her writing and is sent to the writing center. The professors and tutors are all white, and they can’t figure out what to make of this black woman’s voice, which is especially insulting because her first paper is about her own neighborhood. The tutor keeps asking, “Whadidya mean to say here?” (197). Richardson writes, “I looked her dead in the eyes and said, ‘I meant what I said'” (197). There’s a great exchange here; basically, the tutor has her own nasally Midwestern sound, but she gets to judge the author because Richardson doesn’t sound white. This is a fantastic, enlightening scene.

The rest of the college section is rushed, though. She flies through her bachelors, masters, and PhD. She gets a teaching job at a university. She moves to another university. She studies the value of black voices and argues they are not “incorrect” or “wrong,” that closed-minded white tutors and professors “didn’t see who we were or where we came from as an important part of the educational process” (201). I wanted to know so much more here. There isn’t nearly as much detail or specific anecdotes told about her time in school as there was from when she was a prostitute.

This is the biggest flaw of the book. I wish there were two books: one for the first part of her life, and one for the transition into school and the process of earning degrees. I wanted to read about her encounters with teachers, peers, tutors, and even her co-workers and students when she starts to teach. There are a couple of instances, but not nearly enough. After Richardson gets that first college paper back with a D, she talks to another student, a black man who is also older. He says, “This chump don’t know nothin about Black folks. I was using Manchild in the Promised Land as my model, and he was trippin, crossin out every other word! These lil tutors in here, too. Please! I ain’t even worried about it, sis. I got a wife and a family. My wife takes classes at night. We just need they little degrees so we can do what we got to do to take care of ourselves. Knowwhatumsayin?” (200). I love this encounter! It’s as if Richardson and this man are in on a secret about some “system” or “game” that is college.

Despite its too-speedy ending, I highly recommend PHD to Ph.D..

Review originally published at Grab the Lapels!
Profile Image for James E..
7 reviews
May 6, 2014
I highly recommend this captivating memoir by my friend, and fellow Clevelander, Dr. Elaine Richardson--also known as Docta E. She tells a real story, for real folks, and does so with a spirit that will surely engage your own.
6 reviews
October 11, 2013
Songtress, educator, author and C.O.P.E member Docta E Richardson has written a new book, "PHD Po H# on Dope" here is my review, it is a must read! PHD to Ph.D
“Po H# on Dope”
How Education Saved My life

A compelling most fascinating, tale of self-hatred woe, desperation, motivation and finally triumph!
Elaine Richardson’s life from the streets of Cleveland, to the streets of New York City, back to Cleveland, a life full of domestic violence, drug abuse, self- abuse, and total dislike and lack of love for herself is at the least fascinating. This book, this story needs to told, read, shared with “EVERY’ black female who has and does struggle with low self-esteem! It is a story that many a brown, dark skinned sister can certainly identify with, in a world that is still failing to see that there is true beauty in all spectrum's of blackness! Elaine takes us with her on her journey into the life of self-destruction, prostitution; drugs, junkies, pimps, murderers, baby mama, baby daddy; it is all here, tears of sadness to tears of joy. When she just cannot handle it anymore life leads her back to where she was meant to be, back on the right track, back to Education, her live saving redeemer! Just when you think you can’t go on, when you think to yourself, “I’m tired, should I continue to try” someone drops a story that gives you hope, lights a fire, says to you don’t you “DARE” quit! “PHD to Ph.D, Po H# on Dope” Dr. Elaine Richardson does and gives hope, lights the fire, she did not quit, and I hope her story inspires other to keep the faith, not give up hope and never, ever quit!

PHD to Ph.D
“Po H# on Dope” Can be purchased at Amazon, and Barnes and Noble, get a copy you will not be disappointed

Iris S. Smith
Soul/Patrol C.O.P.E
irisssmith@live.com
Profile Image for Angela.
Author 2 books1 follower
November 28, 2014
This woman's story had me stuck in this book for hours. what a great story of strength and triumph. kudos to the author
Profile Image for Natalie.
237 reviews21 followers
June 14, 2015
lots of typos. cant tell if that was intentional but I don't think it was. a heavy read, but definitely one that makes you think about the world.
1 review
March 31, 2016
The best book I've ever read

I love this book, it's like I was sitting there listening to her tell me her life story . I'm definitely reading this book over again. Love it !
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews

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