The main character, Ann, is born into poverty in 1947. It shows how her family controls her and keeps her in poverty through their attitudes regarding gender inequality, immigrants, and minorities. We learn from her how to break this cycle to get out of poverty.
She grows up in Brooklyn with a single mother and an absentee father and tells the story through her memories.
You hear about the three generations of women who were chained to poverty because of ignorance, attitude, low self-esteem, gender inequality and dependence, under the control of men. Then you will see how our main character starts to believe she needs to break free.
You live with her through adolescence, where she does something she regrets for the rest of her life. Then on to young adulthood where she, unbelievably, goes to college and breaks out of the attitudes of poverty and makes it on her own. She learns to see things in a new light and starts to question her old world teachings and the meaning of right and wrong.
You see her married, divorced, remarried, and then in old age. It teaches us how one can reeducate oneself out of a poverty attitude and into the middle-class.