Sharon Flake

All thirteen-year-old Raspberry can think of is making money so that she and her mother never have to worry about living on the streets again.

Features twelve short stories about male and female teenage relationships that are challenged and either succeed or fail.

After the shooting death of his little brother, 13-year-old Mann tries to escape his emotions. To toughen Mann up and prevent him from becoming a statistic, Mann's father draws from African tradition and abandons Mann and his friend Kee Lee in the woods, leaving them to find their own way home.

Teenaged Raspberry Hill tries to sort out her confused feelings of disgust, shame, and love for her homeless, drug addicted father and worries that she may have inherited his lying and stealing ways.

Ten-year-old Queen, a spoiled and conceited African American girl who is disliked by most of her classmates, learns a lesson about friendship from an unlikely "knight in shining armor."

In 9 stories and 15 poems, Sharon G. Flake provides insight into the minds of a diverse group adolescent African American males. There's Tow-Kaye, getting married at age 16 to love of his life, who's pregnant. He knows it's the right thing to do, but he's scared to death. James writes in his diary about his twin brother's terrible secret, which threatens to pull James down, too. Tyler explains what it's like to be a player with the ladies. In a letter...

"An anthology featuring award-winning diverse authors about diverse characters. Short stories, a graphic novel, and a one-act play explore such topics as gentrification, acceptance, untimely death, coming out, and poverty, and range in genre from contemporary realistic fiction to adventure and romance"--