Maya Angelou's rendering of three years of her innocent, awkward, and admirably nervy late adolescence in ["Gather Together in My Name"], the second volume of her autobiography, resembles the performance of a professional dancer trying to imitate someone who can't dance. The grace and competence show through and it's hard to believe in the high incidence of failure she describes in her youth. Thus we are entertained but kept safe from the roughness and painful uncertainty of real ineptitudes.

Angelou's prose is sculpted, concise, rich with flavor and surprise, exuding a natural confidence and command. The fault—since I have found one—lies more in the tone of the book. It is healthy, warm, and tough, winning our affection partly through its refusal to gloss over stupidities, mistakes, and cruelties. Yet this refusal to let her earlier self get off easy, and the self-mockery which is her means...