Leon Dash - Rosa Lee: A Generational Tale Of Poverty And Survival In Urban America

Praise for Rosa Lee

Chilling.Washington Post

Dash is a sensitive, informed and measured journalist. His approach is akin to that of a documentary filmmaker, employing a cinema verite style that graphically shows Cunninghams poorly spent life and that of her extended family as they stagger from crisis to crisis without much joy or hope.... Dash is in skillful command of the storytelling, serving up sordid details in the compelling way that makes drivers rubberneck at grisly auto accidents.

Los Angeles Times

One must applaud Dash for refusing to turn Rosa Lee into an easy emblem.... In its moral complexity, Rosa Lee lies close to There Are No Children Here by Alex Kotlowitz and The Promised Land by Nicholas Lemann.

Newsday

A searing portrait.

Rocky Mountain News

An infectious read.

Minnesota Star Tribune

Gives a clear picture of whats really wrong in the very poor families in Americas cities, and what we might hope to do about it.

Hartford Courant

Remarkable... an epic achievement.

Kirkus

Compelling.

Publishers Weekly

Well written and researched... strongly recommended.

Library Journal

A gripping story. The basic humanity of those trapped in the underclass reverberates. An extremely well written and effective book that calls for thoughtful solutions to complex problems. It must be read by our policy makers.

Alvin F. Poussaint, MD, professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

This extremely moving book is not to be put down. The poor, urban, criminal netherworld that is Rosa Lees everyday life is presented here with all its horrorsteenage pregnancy, prostitution, drugs, child abuse and neglectyet the humanity of the protagonists, and the compassion of the author, shine through on every page.

Melissa Fay Greene, author of Praying for Sheetrock and There is No Me Without You

Copyright 1996 by Leon Dash

Foreword to the revised edition 2015 by Leon Dash

Hardcover first published by Basic Books in 1996

Published by Basic Books, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

Paperback first published in 1997 by Plume

Updated paperback first published 2015 by Basic Books

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10107.

Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 8104145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015933937

ISBN: 978-0-465-05586-9

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Contents

Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America

In the years since Rosa Lee: A Mother and Her Family in Urban America was published, six of her eight children and one grandson followed the trajectory of their lives as outlined in the book. Three of the six who were living when the book was completed have since died; two from lifestyles that included intravenous drug abuse and prostitution, and the third from diabetes.

Even before the book was completed, Rosa Lee Cunningham died of AIDSrelated pneumonia in July 1995, and of her seven children who are profiled (her youngest daughter declined to be included), the first of Rosa Lees six sons, Robert Wright, died of AIDS in January 1993. For almost two decades, I have kept up with the surviving members of her family through Eric Wright, one of two of Rosa Lees six sons who never abused drugs or became habitual criminals, and four of her granddaughters.

Rosa Lees second born son, Ronald Wright, after a long history of intravenous drug abuse which included the sharing of dirty syringes, died of hepatitis at age fifty-two on March 18, 2005.

On a crisp, sunny fall afternoon eighteen years ago, I hand-delivered a first edition hardback copy of Rosa Lee to Rocky Lee Brown Jr., the grandson who is profiled in Chapter Eight, The Third Generation. At the time, Junior, as he is known to everyone in Rosa Lees family, was imprisoned inside Washington, DCs Corrections Department Central Prison in Lorton, Virginia, on his second armed robbery conviction. Several years after his release on the robbery charge, on May 5, 2005, Junior was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison with five years of additional probation supervision following conviction of second-degree murder.

Juniors mother, Donna Denise (Patty) Wright, fifty-one, the older of Rosa Lees two daughters, died in her sleep from complications caused by AIDS after thirty-seven years of drug use and cycling through the prison system on drug and robbery charges. From the age of fourteen, Patty had consciously anesthetized herself with illegal drugs in order to smother the emotional pain she carried from early childhood abuse.

Two of Pattys brothers, Richard Cunningham and Donald David (Ducky) Wright, have continued a debilitating cycle of drug abuse and periodic imprisonment for crimes of drug possession and petty property convictions.

Indeed, Washington, DCs Superior Court records lists Richard Cunninghams most recent court appearance on a charge of cocaine possession as being dismissed on July 18, 2012. Donald Wright was sentenced to six months in prison for receiving stolen property in the same court on March 8, 2011.

Rosa Lees third-born son, Alvin Cunningham, whose move out of the familys underclass social pathologies and into the middle-class is chronicled together with Erics story in Chapter Six, Another Way of Life, died of diabetes at age sixty on August 14, 2013. As of this writing, Eric lives in his suburban Maryland home and is contemplating retirement from the Washington, DC school system. He drives a school bus for children with disabilities.

LEON DASH

Savannah, Georgia

December 14, 2014

OVERLEAF: Rosa Lee Cunningham at her apartment window ( Lucian PerkinsThe Washington Post).

ROSA LEE CUNNINGHAM is thankful that she doesnt have to get up early this morning.