Brown Skin: Dr. Susan Taylor's Prescription for Flawless Skin, Hair, and Nails - Brief Article - Book Review

Black Issues Book Review, Nov-Dec, 2003 by Sylvanna Greene

by Dr. Susan C. Taylor Amistad Press, May 2003 $24.95, ISBN 0-060-06871-0

Dr. Susan C. Taylor has not only provided a prescription for daily skin and hair care but a prescription for a beautiful healthy life. She's a Harvard-trained physician, an expert in dermatology and ethnic skin disease. Taylor is also director of the Skin of Color Center at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City, the first center of this kind.

The doctor has long awaited answers about skin of color. She talks about beauty basics, as well as major concerns affecting darker skins, such as the effects of sickle-cell disease, scars and keloids. The abnormal healing that creates keloid scars may be more common in blacks, Dr. Taylor explains, because we tend to have larger cells in the dermal layer of skin responsible for making collagen.

This book is an essential home health-care guide for African Americans because it explains the biological make up of people of color by a doctor of color.

Sylvanna Greene is a cosmetologist and co-owner of a skin-care and cosmetic line.