Disturbing, heart-wrenching, and painfully relevant.

As a single mother, Lutie Johnson steadfastly fights for her own dignity and to raise her young son Bubb into a decent person amidst the poverty, violence, and racist contempt that surrounds them. The setting is 116th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. No one escapes this wretched world, where people are inevitably harsh and blunt, driven to desperate criminal acts. Lutie is determined to make the leap to a better life, but the depravity of the streets and the cruelty of a dehumanizing system stand in her way with all their might.