Unafraid of the Dark: A Memoir

In elegant, passionate prose, Rosemary L. Bray uses her personal history to persuasively defend America's much-maligned welfare system. A smart black girl from the Chicago slums didn't have much chance of going to Yale or becoming an editor at the New York Times Book Review before Aid to Families with Dependent Children helped Rosemary's selfless mother make ends meet and keep Rosemary in school. Bray's account of her progress is both inspiring and despairing, as she criticizes the welfare "reforms" that closed to others doors that were opened for her.