The devastating story of brothers Lafayette and Pharoah Rivers, children of the Chicago ghetto, is powerfully told here by a Wall Street Journal reporter who first met the boys in 1985 when they were 10 and 7, respectively. Their family includes a mother, a frequently absent father, an older brother, and younger triplets. We witness the horrors of growing up in an ill-maintained housing project tyrannized by drug gangs and where murders and shootings frequently occur.
Oprah Winfrey
as LaJoe Rivers
Maya Angelou
as Lelia Mae
Keith David
as John Paul Rivers
Mark Lane
as Lafayette Rivers
Norman D. Golden II
as Pharoah Rivers
Vonte Sweet
as Craig
Crystal Laws Green
as Rochelle
