Who Is Clarence McKinsey?

A twelve-year-old black boy born in the 1960s Los Angeles ghetto struggles to care for his infant sister while his drug-addicted mother struggles for her own survival. He fights, unsuccessfully, the gangsters that seek to use him and even his mothers treachery. Only the Geffens, who find him scrounging for food in a dumpster, can save him from the abyss. But their culture is also filled with suspicion, hate, and bigotry, and the question of why? In a white, Jewish culture, Clarence McKinsey now fights to survive in another battleground of a black boy in a white world. He uses their values to succeed and suffers their condemnation. He learns their standards of morality and endures their abuse. And when he finds the woman he loves, he must fight with himself to choose which color of life he will live, all the time askingwho is the real Clarence McKinsey? [via]