A rare, fifteen-year ethnography, this book follows the lives of individual, low-income African American youth from the beginning of high school into their early adult years. It reveals the critical junctures and turning points shaping their life courses and challenges many long-held assumptions about the persistence of racial inequality.

Rhonda F. Levine is Professor of Sociology, Emerita, at Colgate University, USA. She is the author of Class, Networks, and Identity (2001) and Class Struggle and The New Deal (1988), and editor of Enriching the Sociological Imagination: How Radical Sociology Changed the Discipline (2005) and Social Class and Stratification: Classic Statements and Theoretical Debates, Second Edition (2006).

Preface. Chapter 1. Introduction. Chapter 2. Hoveys' Porch. Chapter 3. School Daze. Chapter 4. Sports and a Caring Coach. Chapter 5. The Gender Factor: Bad Black Girls Who Are Not All Bad. Chapter 6. From Teenagers to Adulthood: Revisiting Hoveys' Porch. Chapter 7. Conclusion. Appendix: A Note On Methodology. References. Index.