Ruby L. Oliver in Person Set in Chicago, this hard-hitting melodrama tracks a South Side family's struggle to play and win against poverty's strongest suit: hopelessness. Featuring a cast of fine black actors, the story focuses on Leola, whose careful plans for college and career are thrown into disarray when she finds herself pregnant at the age of 17. Leola (Carole E. Hall) is supported by a mother (Audrey Morgan) who won't give up on her, but she is not Mama's only "problem child." The mother's two sons are veering toward a life of crime and her alcoholic husband has quit his job. Mama, no fool, uses faith as a device: it gives her entrée into resourceful solutions. Ruby L. Oliver directed daycare centers for some twenty-three years before switching gears and sending herself to film school. Love Your Mama's genesis was in the many teenage mothers, in need of assistance from many Mamas, whom she met throughout her career. "Love Your Mama is a remarkable debut: assured, highly focused, surprisingly upbeat, considering the number of problems that it addresses without flinching" (Jonathan Rosenbaum, The Reader).