This standalone memoir is volume two in Angelou's autobiography. And honestly, I was shocked. That does sound pearl-clutching, doesn't it? Yet I had only a sketchy knowledge of Angelou's life before this, and her being a teenage madame/prostitute was not on my list of "parts from which one of America's greatest writers is built." As if a facility for words has no place in a brothel. It's not a pretty bias, but there it is - a reminder to be more mindful in the future.

It's odd, in a way, reading this in my forties. Angelou, who is no more than nineteen, I think, in this, comes off as horribly naive at times - not at all unreasonable for her stage of life, but I winced reading her getting taken in by that pimp, and I think most people would. You can see the awfulness coming, even when she can't. Yet it's hard to call a teenage madame "naive" - her experiences exploiting other women are wince-inducing in a different way. All in all, that beautiful prose is in service, here, of a very inconsistent personality. I don't say that as denigration. Teenagers and young adults should be inconsistent as they're trying to work themselves out. It's just here the inconsistency is dramatised by an excellent writer, and so naturally the effect is heightened.