African-American entrepreneurs' profiles point the way to opportunity.(Knight Ridder Newspapers)

``Against All Odds,'' by Wendy Harris (John Wiley & Sons, 237 pages, $24.95)

The 10 inspiring profiles compressed into Wendy Harris' "Against All Odds" call to mind the refrain of an old song that emphasized, "It's what you do with what you got."

What Sylvia and Herbert Woods, a.k.a. the Queen and King of Soul Food, brought to the table were a love for and comprehensive knowledge of home-style Southern African-American cooking, a taste for hard work and habits of thrift and adaptability.

From where she started in rural South Carolina, one could never have predicted that Sylvia Woods would eventually own, in conjunction with her husband, the most celebrated soul food restaurant in America _ the Harlem hub of an expanding multimillion-dollar empire of restaurants, catering services and canned foods.

The woman after whom Sylvia's Restaurant, at Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, is named was born in Hemingway, S.C., in 1926. She was raised on a farm by her mother and grandmother. They grew everything they ate. That's how she learned both about homestyle Southern cooking and hard work.

She also learned thrift from her mother, Julia Pressley, who went to New York to work as a laundress to earn money to build herself a house back in Hemingway. She saved all that she earned except what she had to spend on bare essentials. Her bank was a homemade satchel that she wore under her dress.

If Julia Pressley earned $8, she put $5 in her satchel. As the number of stashed bills accumulated, she would change the smaller ones into larger ones to save space. She built her house and cared for her daughter using the same way of saving, accumulating a small nest egg that provided her enough money to get a loan to buy the small diner where she worked.