Newt Winger is a sensitive teenager who dreams often and big ... and from whom his mother dreams even bigger. Gordon Parks (Shaft) proves a triple threat as director, producer and screenwriter of this film version of his autobiographical novel about Winger, a young black man coming of age in small-town Kansas during the 1920s. In 1989, this film was among the first 25 films designated by the U.S. Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Film Library for all time.