Book excerpt: Ripped from middle-class life in Philadelphia, and transplanted to a single-parent household in the segregated south, Sarah, a precocious black child struggles to be the master of her fate. She refuses to accept the segregation that tries to confine herÑa system her mother accepts as the southern way of life. A brave memoir that testifies to the authorÕs fiery spirit and sense of self that sustained her through family, social and cultural upheavals.