Written by the author of "Honey, Honey, Miss Thang", which was nominated for the 1996 Lambda Literary Award for books on transgender. This book tells about Margaret, a thirty-three-year-old cocaine-using prostitute, and four other women, all inner-city hustlers, describing their lives, how they came to be where they are, and where they hope to go.

However, their stories also reveal their common humanity and their profound will to survive despite all obstacles. These women manage to live self-defined and self-validated lives in a world even more turbulent than that of their mainstream sisters. They share a web of experiences created out of race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, drug use, and urbanization that provides them with meaning and courage. They speak movingly about guilt and responsibility, about rape and intimacy, and about ambition and despair. Through their stories we can grasp the traumas and turning points that lead us all to make bad decisions as well as those ideals and inspirations that can help to redeem us. Author note: Leon E Pettiway is Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Justice, Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of "Honey, Honey, Miss Thang" (Temple), which was nominated for the 1996 Lambda Literary Award for books on transgender.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Margaret
2. Charlie
3. Virginia
4. Tracy
5. Laquita