TAFFY

All the four letter words and the excesses of both young and adult worlds are here in this story of the Negro in the Harlem and Brooklyn areas. Mrs. Johnson, through sheer force of steel, moves her family away from Harlem's hopelessness to the Stuyvant action and there, not without some missteps, makes her way in the church, in community and civic affairs -- all at the expense of her husband's and children's welfare. It is Taffy, who has run around with the tough gangs in his old district, who finds the new boys and girls as merciless to a newcomer, and who, in retreating to the old world he knew, brings disgrace on his family when he kills a white man. But the disgrace is the means of making Mrs. Johnson dearer to her new friends. The pattern of Negro social life on various levels, the conflict of white and colored, the difficulties of juvenile control -- all in realistic, though not attractive, vein. PL's will use the ten-foot pole.