- A black high school senior struggles with becoming a man, and living in a middle class white neighborhood in the late 1950s U.S. In protest of the paternalistic views of the Civil War emphasized in his history class, he storms out and gets caught smoking a cigar in the boys' room. Spence's crush on a white classmate goes nowhere because of her father's attitude toward blacks. His outspoken grandmother seems the only one who understands his angry growing pains, at the early stages of the U.S.'s Civil Rights Era.—David Stevens
- Spencer Scott has two problems; he suffers the normal anguish of a teen-ager in the process of growing up with "misunderstanding parents", and he is also a black boy in a predominately-white New England town. He is accepted by his white-boy classmates because of his athletic ability but their parents object to his color. And he is confused about the ambivalence of his parents who teach him to have self-respect for his race but, at the same time, telling him to compromise with his white friends. He is expelled from school for violently protesting his history teacher's remarks about the shortcomings of the black people during the Civil War. He wanders into the black-section of the town and encounters four prostitutes at a bar.—Les Adams <longhorn1939@suddenlink.net>
- For a better life and greater opportunity, African-American couple May and Lem Scott, along with May's feisty now eighty-three year old infirmed mother, Mrs. Martin, long ago moved from the inner city slums to an almost exclusively white working class suburban neighborhood on the south end of the northern US town in which they live, it a move Mrs. Martin never believed was a good one in taking them out of their element. This life is the only one May and Lem's seventeen year old son, high school senior Spence Scott, has ever known. While Spence does have a group of friends from school, he is beginning to feel more and more alienated in this life, from his white friends now dating girls, some whose families don't like black people, and as the history being taught in his school is from a white perspective in marginalizing blacks. While May and Lem want Spence to adhere to the social mores of their surroundings, meaning behaving properly such as respecting authority and not making a fuss, Gram understands the problems Spence is facing in his frustration with going into adulthood as black in a predominantly white environment, she who Spence truly considers his best friend. In that frustration, Spence goes in search of an understanding of the black experience, from his encounter with a group of black prostitutes he meets in town, to for the first time truly talking to Christine, the young black woman the Scotts have hired as their housekeeper, largely to take care of Mrs. Martin during the day when they are at work.—Huggo
It looks like we don't have any synopsis for this title yet. Be the first to contribute.
Learn moreContribute to this page
Suggest an edit or add missing content