Brown lived through the ordeal of early adolescence because he was tough, intelligent and lucky. He cut loose from his parents, came of age in the school prisons where he was fortunate enough to find a few white supervisors who could give him a reason for living. At 17 he had passed the crisis. The move from his home, he says, 'was a move away from fear, toward challenges, towards the positive anger that I think every young man should have'.

[In Manchild in the Promised Land] Brown tells his story in the guise of the delinquent who simply reports in the scatological argot of the slums what he said and saw and did. Occasionally, the voice of the mature Brown interpolates. The narrative is meandering and repetitive, its course matching that of the wild boys and girls whose misadventures finally blur into common disaster. Inviting comparison with the...