Intro Excerpt: Making meaningful contributions in the fields of autobiography, youth studies, education, and African American Studies, Stephanie Y. Evans’s Black Passports: Travel Memoirs as a Tool for Youth Empowerment (2014) is an important book that grapples with ways to inspire today’s young people. Evans identifies a serious issue that youth around the world face: a lack of role models to guide them in fulfilling their destiny. She desires to empower Black youth by providing them with tools-200 African American autobiographies with narrative explorations of international travel-that they can use as guides to help them in becoming wise citizens of the world. Overlooked no longer, young people can find an oasis within the pages of the travel memoirs or “narratives-within-texts” that Evans explores and adults can assist them along the journey. Pairing mentoring skills with curriculum development, Evans’s Black Passports ultimately furthers scholarship within higher education geared toward assisting youth with setting and achieving goals that will positively impact their lives as well as the local, national, and global communities to which they belong.