Ripped from middle-class life in Philadelphia, and transplanted to a single-parent household in the segregated south, Sarah, a precocious black child struggles to be the master of her fate. She refuses to accept the segregation that tries to confine her-a system her mother accepts as the southern way of life. A brave memoir that testifies to the author's fiery spirit and sense of self that sustained her through family, social and cultural upheavals.