Tomorrow's Tomorrow: The Black Woman Book

This study of poor black girls growing up in the late 60s in a St. Louis housing project is powerful reading. The author, a black female sociologist, approaches her subjects with the principle that their so-called "deviant" behaviors are actually strengths developed in response to the oppressive culture of institutional racism. The concluding chapter is a powerful indictment of middle-class white culture and a forthright celebration of the black culture which has somehow thrived and blossomed in spite of it. The writing can be hard to follow in places, but that may be more from my unfamiliarity with sociology than from any weakness in the author.