Five of Rosa Guy's eight published novels deal with the problems that black youths face in the racially discriminatory and culturally impoverished environment of Harlem. Though her novels are usually categorized as books for young adults, she is a compelling and courageous voice among contemporary American writers.

Rosa Guy was born in Trinidad, West Indies, in 1925. In 1932, at the age of seven, she migrated to the United States with her parents, Henry and Audrey Cuthbert, and her sister, Ameze. Guy says that she came to New York, arriving in her best silk dress, to greet the first winter of her life. "That might account for the first horrible and long-lasting impression I had of New York," she says. It was in Harlem that the family made their home and where young Rosa and her sister grew up.

Two years after the family's arrival in Harlem, the mother died...