CSI Files
Captain
<p>June is a busy month for <font color=yellow>Hill Harper</font>. This past Tuesday, June 3rd, saw the release of his second book, <i>Letters to a Young Sister</i>, which follows up his 2006 bestseller, <i>Letters to a Young Brother</i>. Harper is about to kick off a book tour that will take him across the country, but first he's finishing filming the first four episodes of <i>CSI: New York</i>'s fifth season. Harper took time out of his busy schedule to discuss the release of his book and what's in store for his character, Dr. Sheldon Hawkes with CSI Files' <font color=yellow>Kristine Huntley</font>.<p><b>CSI Files:</b> Your second book, <i>Letters to a Young Sister: DeFINE Your Destiny</i> is out this week! Congratulations! <p><b>Hill Harper:</b> It's a huge [week] for me. I couldn't be more excited. I couldn't be more proud of the book itself. I'm really happy and excited about it. There are two pictures of me on the set of <i>CSI: New York</i>, so that's kind of cool. This time there's a picture of myself, <font color=yellow>Gary [Sinise</font>, Mac Taylor], <font color=yellow>Carmine [Giovinazzo</font>, Danny Messer] and [Executive Producer] <font color=yellow>Pam Veasey</font> and then there's just a picture of me.<p><b>CSI Files:</b> How was the experience of writing this book different from writing your first book, <i>Letters to a Young Brother</i>? <p><b>Harper:</b> Since it's for young women, I spent more time doing research and interviewing young women as well as [going] out to a lot of surrogate sisters. I have a lot more contributors [in this book]. Women I respect are contributing like <font color=yellow>Alfre Woodard</font>, <font color=yellow>Angela Bassett</font>, <font color=yellow>Michelle Obama</font>, <font color=yellow>Ruby Dee</font>, <font color=yellow>Gabrielle Union</font> wrote the forward, <font color=yellow>Sanaa Lathan</font>, <font color=yellow>Nikki Giovanni</font>--just an amazing group of women contributed to the book. It's why I love the book so much, because of the diversity and the intelligence of the women that contributed. It's not just me and what I say, it's what they say as well.<p><b>CSI Files:</b> What do you see as the biggest challenges facing young women today?<p><b>Harper:</b> The biggest challenge that came up [when writing the book] that I noticed when dealing with young women was self-esteem and self-worth, a lot of issues surrounding body image and their view of themselves. The reason why the subtitle of the book is "DeFINE Your Destiny" is you want to recapture that self-esteem. I capitalized the FINE of "Define" [because] I want young women to look in the mirror and say that they're fine. I want them to define fine by saying, "I'm fantastic, I'm interesting, I'm necessary and I'm exceptional." That's what the "fine" of "define" is. It's really helping restore their own self-esteem and self-worth because once you do that, you can talk about future-based things like financial literacy, HIV/AIDS protection, pregnancy protection--all these things that involve thinking about you as a future being. So you really have to talk about self-esteem and self-worth [first].<p><b>CSI Files:</b> I know with the first book you faced the--as it turns out, erroneous--preconception that young men don't read. Were there any similar challenges with this book?<p><b>Harper:</b> No, not with getting it published because the success of the first book was so great that that was not an issue. But the issue for me is that I want this book to make <i>The New York Times</i> bestseller list like the last one because it's so important to send the message again to the publishers that books like this--motivational books, where the heart of the book is in the right place--to show them that there's a real market for it, books for young women. That's what I want, go to <A class="link" HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Letters-Young-Sister-DeFINE-Destiny/dp/1592403514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212734053&sr=1-1">Amazon.com</a>, go to my website for my charity, my foundation, which is <A class="link" HREF="http://www.manifestyourdestiny.org">Manifest Your Destiny</a> and click through it. I still want to see this book to do really well, to reaffirm there's a market. I know of three more books in pipelines, motivational books, that were done because of the success of <i>Letters to a Young Brother</i>. I'm very proud of that.<p><b>CSI Files:</b> What are some of the valuable lessons in the book for young women?<p><HR ALIGN="CENTER" SIZE="1" WIDTH="45%" COLOR="#007BB5"><p>To read the full interviews, please click <A HREF="http://www.csifiles.com/interviews/hill_harper4.shtml">here</A>.<center></center>
