Sounder

David Lee Morgan (Kevin Hooks) wants to learn to read, and his hunger for school grows as his family's hunger for food does. His father, Nathan Lee (Paul Winfield), is a sharecropper in Depression-era Louisiana, sent to prison for stealing a meal, which leaves Rebecca (Cicely Tyson) to hold the household together. Martin Ritt's film shows plainly how little the Morgans are given, and how much they still carry.