The Diary of Aaliyah Anderson

by Randall Barnes

Meet Aaliyah Anderson, a beautiful, intelligent, ambitious thirteen-year-old young woman ready to take over the world. With her mom being a superstar broadcast journalist and her older brother Damon being an acclaimed writer and star sports player. Aaliyah lives a fantastic life. Aaliyah quickly learns that her good life, doesn't separate her from life's problems. She has to deal with tons of hardships and avoid many obstacles along her path to achieving her short term goal of finally making it to high school and what she feels will bring her closer to her dreams of being a CEO of a company. Aaliyah has to deal with overwhelming family issues such as the divorce of her parents and the result of her "father's" unfaithfulness, infidelity, and a family secret that turns her world upside down. As if her family wasn't messed up enough, her eleven-year old brother turns to the streets and joins the Eastside Rydahz, one of the most notorious gangs in the city. Her eldest brother Jeffery, or high-ranked Rydah 808, hates everything about Aaliyah and she doesn't understand it. All Aaliyah wants is to have the ideal loving, united family and it hurts her that their situation is seemingly fractured beyond repair. To make things even more pressing, she lives in the ruthless city of Willowsfield, statistically the #1 most dangerous city in America, where senseless community violence is the norm and life expectancy is low. With the pressure to succeed and make it out of the ditch that Aaliyah calls her hometown, she still has to deal with more problems that test her patience. With its realistic characters, life-like setting and dynamic message, The Diary of Aaliyah Anderson is entertaining and a sure fire conversation starter on what we need to do as a generation.

230 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 31, 2014

About the author

Randall Barnes is a twenty-one year old author, journalist and content creator that is a junior Media Studies major at Fort Valley State University in Fort Valley, Georgia. Randall serves as a 2017-2018 White House HBCU All-Star Ambassador for the White House Initiative on HBCU's, representing his HBCU. He is already the author of the award-winning Young Adult fiction book series "The Diary of Aaliyah Anderson", published by DC Bookdiva Publications. His eShort "Riverview High: Circumstances" hit number #2 on the Amazon charts the week of its debut, sitting right under bestselling author Zane’s "I’ll Be Home For Christmas" the weekend of the debut of her movie "Addicted".

Randall is the owner of HBCU Pulse, an HBCU and millennial centric blog that's ran in conjunction with Urban Intellectuals. Follow Randall on social media: @authorrandallb and @hbcupulse/@thehbcupulse on Twitter.