ROCKING THE BABIES by Linda Raymond...

ROCKING THE BABIES by Linda Raymond (Penguin: $10.95; 260 pp.). Nettie Lee Johnson, the central character of Linda Raymond’s American Book Award-winning novel, is overweight, outspoken and weary. Her greatest trial is her daughter, Yolanda, who “doesn’t have the sense she was born with.” When Yolanda abandons her crack-addicted baby in a Porta Potti, Nettie enrolls as a “volunteer grandmother” for premature infants in a local hospital. Her desire to be near her fragile grandchild brings her into contact with the prim, middle-class Martha Howard and with young mothers who will care for a new generation of African Americans. Drawing on African and African American traditions, Nettie spins funny, pointed tales that educate as they amuse.