Noted historian Robin D. G. Kelley is tired of people talking about his mama and folks like her. He's tired of victim-blaming critics and policies that pin most of our social ills on the black urban poor. In Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! Kelley fights back. In this provocative and timely book, he examines how scholars, activists, policy makers, and displaced working people themselves have made sense of the contemporary ghetto.

At the same time, Yo' Mama's Disfunktional! gives voice to the very urban populations rendered silent by their attackers. He asks us to see culture and community as more than responses to, or products of, oppression. Ultimately, this is a hopeful book. Kelley reveals how new multiracial social movements emerging today have the potential of transforming the nation.