Chapters (31)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Room in the Dark I
- Fawns of the Diaspora Court Liliane in Paris, While Tabou Combo Whispers “Coq Qualité” in Her Ears
- Room in the Dark II
- “I Usedta Drink, Smoke and Do the Hoochie-Koo,” or What’s a Girl to Do When Her Mother Looks Like Ruth Brown
- Room in the Dark III
- “El Bochinche” es que only Fe Cortijo Knows or All the LeBron Brothers Know If Victor-Jésus María Sang Lili to Her Freedom
- Room in the Dark IV
- And Where Is Garnett Mimms?
- Room in the Dark V
- I Know Where Kansas City Is, But Did Wilbert Harrison Ever Get There?
- Room in the Dark VI
- Zoom Went the Strings of Liliane’s Heart, But Arsenio Rodriguez Could Have Told Her the Music Sounds Just as Sweet When We’re Blind and Still We See
- Room in the Dark VII
- I Know Where the E Train Stops But I’m “Sendin’ Out an S.O.S.” and I’m Not Edwin Starr Either
- Room in the Dark VIII
- “Happy, Happy Birthday, Baby” or Wouldn’t It Be Great If the Lead Singer of The Crests Wasn’t a White Boy and I Could Be My Mother?
- Room in the Dark IX
- Every Time My Lil World Seems Blue, I Just Haveta Look at You and Learn Eye-Hand Coordination
- Room in the Dark X
- “That’s Why I Love Her So and Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, I Want to Know” or Why Jackie Wilson Died in Silence
- Room in the Dark XI
- There’s No Use Cryin’ “Forever” or Hyacinthe Returns from a Very Blue Holiday for Real B(l)ack at Ya
- Room in the Dark XII
- Lollie Struts Her Stuff Thru “The Sea of Love” or the Brides of Frankenstein Catch the Bouquet
- By Ntozake Shange
- Acknowledgments
- Copyright
While Liliane and Rose Lynne were off gabbing with the boys from Nassau to Missouri, Lollie, Hyacinthe, and I were watching the late show. The Santa Fe Trail, starring Ronald Reagan and Errol Flynn, with assorted Negro character actors and Ray Massey as John Brown, himself. Lollie was routing for the Abolitionists, Brown and his company of fanatics. Roxie was holdt up in the corner of Liliane’s closet like she thought night riders was gonna come to New Jersey. Hyacinthe kept repeating “our plans remain to ourselves, alone” like she was one of John Brown’s partisans. I was chugging a beer when I heard a strange squeal jump from Hyacinthe’s body. Hyacinthe was distraught that the military strategist for the Abolitionists had ratted on Brown’s plans for Harpers Ferry. Hyacinthe was cursin’ the TV, jumpin’ up and down, screamin’: “No, no. They can’t stop us. We won’t let them stop us. No, no, not in my lifetime.” Now, I think I established that Hyacinthe was not all the way there, but taking seriously a Hollywood version of the Emancipation issue was far and away foolish, if you get what I mean. Nothing in that movie was gonna vindicate our pasts, our forebears, our sense of who we are. Hyacinthe should have laughed at those crackers portraying Longstreet, Sheridan, Custer, and Stewart, just like they’d have laughed at us, a bunch of colored girls, saying out loud that crackers not only created a country they stole from other people, but they reaped the riches of the labor of other folks they had stolen. Not only was this a thieves’ paradise, but all of us, Lollie, Roxie, Hyacinthe, Liliane, and me, we were living testimony that nobody like us had ever existed before, and nobody had expected we’d be so goddamned hard to kill off.
In the middle of John Brown’s speech before he was hanged at Harpers Ferry, Hyacinthe started crying uncontrollably. She ran out the room all over the place like she thought slavers was after her crazy behind. Well, I wanted to see the end of the movie cause I like to know what’s up, you see, but Lollie wouldn’t stay with me to see whether the predictions of the Indian woman with the stick, drawing spells in the dirt, came true or not. I shouted at her, too: “Lollie, don’t you want to see what happened?”