Based on a heart-rending and much discussed series in the Washington Post, this is the story of one woman and her family living in the projects in Washington, D.C. A transcendent piece of writing, it won the Pulitzer Prize and the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. For four years Leon Dash of the Washington Post followed the lives of Rosa Lee Cunningham, her children, and five of her grandchildren, in an effort to understand the persistence of poverty and pathology within America's black underclass. Rosa Lee's life story spans a half century of hardship in the slums and housing projects of Southeast Washington, a stone's throw from the marble halls and civic monuments of the world's most prosperous nation. Yet for all of America's efforts, Rosa Lee and millions like her remain trapped in a cycle of poverty characterized by illiteracy, teenage pregnancy, drugs, and violent crime. Dash brings us into her life and the lives of her family members offering a human drama that statistics can only refer to. He also shows how some people -- including two of Rosa Lee's children -- have made it out of the ghetto, breaking the cycle to lead stable middle-class lives in the mainstream of American society.

From New York Times bestselling author Jodi Thomas comes a reader-favorite story of a life, a legacy and a love that has the power to change a community. Originally published in 2005. Everyone assumes that Rosa Lee Altman lived a life without passion. Her once-beautiful home now sits silent and empty, its gardens overgrown and its windows boarded up, surrounded by what passes for progress in Clifton Creek, Texas. And if some of the townsfolk have their way, this idyllic reminder of times past will be sold off to the highest bidder, despite its rich history. When a group of community members with little in common is chosen to decide the fate of the old Altman place, they soon learn that this home is more than bricks and mortar. No one is prepared for what they discover beneath Rosa Lee’s overgrown roses—or how her legacy will change not only their town, but their very lives.

Based on a series of Pulitzer Prize-winning articles, this harrowing account of life in the urban underclass offers compelling testimony in the ongoing national debate about welfare reform. In Rosa Lee, Washington Post reporter Leon Dash vividly chronicles the hardships and pathologies of the daily life of a family in the slums of Washington, D.C. Defying simplistic conservative and liberal arguments about why the black underclass persists, Dash puts a human face on their struggle to survive despite both disastrous personal choices and almost insurmountable circumstances. The book spans a half-century of hardship, from Rosa Lee Cunningham?s bleak early life in the Jim Crow South to her death from AIDS at age fifty-nine. Rosa Lee gave birth to her first child at fourteen, was married at sixteen, and ultimately bore eight children whom she had no legitimate means of supporting. When her welfare checks proved insufficient to feed her family, she turned to prostitution and selling stolen clothes and drugs. Yet Rosa Lee maintained a flickering desire to do what was right. Two of her sons did escape the ghetto to enter mainstream life, and after Dash?s series of articles ran in The Washington Post, she made public speeches, hoping to encourage other people to avoid her destructive choices. Rosa Lee is the worthy successor to such works as Jonathan Kozol?s Death at an Early Age. It offers no easy answers, but is instead challenging, thought-provoking, and utterly unforgettable.