Merle

I enjoyed this more than Angelou's first memoir, which won't be a surprise to anyone who knows my tastes, because in this book she's a teenager/young adult while in the first she was a child. Adults make for active protagonists, while children are passive. So I enjoyed the content more and therefore appreciated the writing more. It's a short, quick read and kept me engaged, though, as in the first book, events sometimes seem disconnected from each other, and Angelou's tone can be so wry and detached that it's hard to tell how the events of her life affected her; when she does write about her feelings, there's often a sense of amusement behind it. I wanted a little more, especially since some of the events are so outlandish they're hard to believe (a naive teenager stumbles into opening a brothel and pressuring a couple of part-time hookers into staffing it? Whaaaaat?). Clearly creative license is being taken - hence all that dialogue that moves the story along so quickly - and I wonder just how much. But regardless, this is an enjoyable book with a strong voice and a fresh perspective.