Ok, now that I have your attention, today is the day Shannon Boodram's book, "Laid: Young People's Experiences with Sex in an Easy-Access Culture" (Seal Press/ October 2009) is release into the world!! I'm so excited for you mama!
I want all you dope & fresh people out there to go to Chapters (or Barnes and Nobles, depending on where you live) and grab a copy or two and educate yourselves!! I also invite you to come out and show Shannon love at her book release party on Wednesday, October 14 at Revival (located at 783 College Street West.... It's a 19+ event!).
Shannon says, "LAID is a collection of true stories from males and females 18-25 across North America. It covers hookups, amazing sexual experiences, consequences (STD/ abortion/ pregnancy), date rape/ sexual abuse and abstinence. It is shockingly real... - I am the editor with contributing stories."
Some pictures representing each chapter of the book and more words from Ms. Boodram about why she wrote 'LAID'....
"My American University experience was extraordinarily educational but not in the way you migh expect – what I learned from others easily trumped whatever was fed to me in my classes. There are many in Baltimore who made a strong impact on my education but there are three individuals who particularly stand out: a young girl living with HIV that I met through a local mall modeling competition, a homosexual girl who was my age as well as one of my dorm mates and finally a serious boyfriend who took far more interest in respecting my sexuality than I was accustomed to.
I had a wonderful experience in Maryland but I chose not to stay on scholarship since my love for track had dissipated. So, at 19 I came back to my home city, Toronto. I felt like a brand new person and what changed the most was my view on sexuality. At age 16, for several frivolous reasons (friends, media, pressure, stupidity) I became pretty promiscuous. I took this mentality with me to Baltimore but it certainly did not make it on my return flight. My self-sexual education had begun but it was far from over. I began to read books, search on-line and talk to others but I could not find the raw candor I had become accustomed to in Baltimore. To boot my youngest cousin, whom I was extremely close to, was 16 and way too much like me. I did not want her to make the sexual same mistakes based on ignorance or misconceptions."
"In what seemed like an overnight whim, I launched a website called Save Your Cherry (http://www.saveyourcherry.com/), a small, poorly designed site that shared my own experiences and encouraged others to write in and tell theirs. I went on Much Music, a National TV show as a contestant for a show wearing an airbrushed marina with the site name and a huge cherry on the front. After that I couldn’t turn back and the e-mails began to poor in. My sex site, which graphically described how I lost my virginity to a near stranger, initially broke my mother’s heart, but it went on to help hundreds of thousands of curious and perhaps a little fed-up young people like myself. Based on the site’s success, I decided to try and turn the collection into a book. I obsessively recruited writers using youth networking services like Myspace, Facebook and Urbis. There is no way to calculate just how many hours I spent telling others about a book that needed their voice."
You guys have no idea how much I respect this lady's grind and her determination to educate others and the honest, no-holds bar way she's doing it..... GO GET HER BOOK!!!
Ms. MusiQ thinks Shannon is one of the dopest.... Owwww!
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