In a time when so much black fiction has collapsed into autobiography and rhetoric, and when every novel seems to be about some manchild or blueschild, it is wonderfully refreshing to read Al Young's third novel, Sitting Pretty. I don't know of any other black novel where the vernacular is used so well, unless it be in Young's own (Snakes, 1970, and Who Is Angelina?, 1975)…. (p. 275)

The beauty of Young's vernacular method is that it brings alive a thoroughly engaging human being. Maintaining the mask with perfect consistency, however, Young avoids all moral issues. In a sense that's a strength: there can be nothing pretentious about Sitting Pretty nor about what he learns at last, that he must take life "a little at a time and do the best [he] can." He understands from life what he read in Emerson, that "It's always another side to everything and everybody...