In "The Sea Birds Are Still Alive: Collected Stories" Toni Cade Bambara … tries to avoid narcissistic stereotypes. Reading her stories is like coming into a crowded, hot, smoky room where a dozen different voices (most of them speaking Black English) are telling a dozen disparate tales. Some of the stories fail just because there is too much verbal energy, too much restless pursuit of random anecdote. But the fine title story (set in Vietnam), on the other hand, makes its meaning felt just by the diversity of sights and sounds and inferred lives. "Witchbird" is another story that surmounts the temptations—because, I think, Miss Bambara has here solved some of her troubles with the monologue form, and because her narrator … is so full of life she almost bursts from the page. Shrewd, tough, cat-smart and, at the same time, both sentimental and humane, she's an original.

Robie...