Mama's GirlBy: Veronica Chambers On the streets of Brooklyn in the 1970s, Veronica Chambers mastered the whirling helixes of a double dutch jump rope with the same finesse she brought to her schoolwork, her often troubled family life, and the demands of being overachieving and underprivileged. Her mothera Panamanian immigrantwas too often overwhelmed by the task of raising Veronica and her difficult younger brother on her meager secretary's salary to applaud her