W Street

"Rock, chip rock, love, crack." It would be nice to think this is a poem but these are merely the beads on a rosary of misery. Words which express the horror of an America which has ignored itself, which has forgotten itself. Easily made, easily consumed, easy sold, easily got used to, crack gained immediate popularity in the ghettos of the black and hispanic communities.
Seven years after crack first appeared, an entire generation has gone up in smoke, lost. For the first time, a drug has made women lose all sense of responsibility towards their children. To fill the void there are the grandmothers, the last bastion of a community which has lost its way.
Mable and Genova are young, very young grandmothers. They have hardly finished raising their own children when their daughters, insensitive to everything, leave child after child on their doorsteps. They have no time for anything, to go out, to have a man in their life, sometimes even to eat, let alone dream. They are full-time grandmothers of grandchildren who will be lost if they let them down.