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
——— Are you saying a whole community would have turned against a child?
——— We were never children, we were the future of the race.
——— Liliane, you are carrying around a tiny little book full of shreds of letters from a mother you haven’t seen in twenty years, yet you want me to believe that there is no significance in this?
——— No. I’m mad. I’m very mad.
——— Who are you mad at?
——— Right now, I’m mad at you, but I’m mad at Daddy and the black people who were our friends, but I’m most especially mad at this goddamned country which imagines that we don’t exist, don’t have loved ones and histories and dreams for our children. I’m mad about watching our daily lives stamped out like so many fireflies.
———
——— Oh, you’ll never understand if I don’t tell you.
——— Yes, that’s true.
——— My mommy didn’t want to leave, but she had no place to take me with Mr. Rothen…whatever his name is. You can’t take a child somewhere that doesn’t exist. And Daddy was so sure women were decorative afterthoughts; the substance of Mommy though always alluring was also something to be hidden.
——— That would be hard, it seems to me, to hide S. Bliss.
——— That was impossible.
——— So what are you hiding now, Lili?
——— I’d like to say, “Oh, nothin’,” but I guess I’m hiding all the years I wish I’d had with her, but not with that man.
——— So, like your daddy you want S. Bliss all to yourself, too?
——— Yeah, I guess so, but Mommy’d already taught me about beauty. She’d already shown me so much of what was precious in me. Ha, I couldn’t destroy that no matter how many tackhead fools I fucked. Jesus, this is monumental.
——— Or diversionary. We haven’t established why you are continually late and refuse to pay me.
——— Oh, that’s simple.
——— Really?
——— Yeah. I don’t want to talk about my mother disappearing, so the later I come the less I have to talk.
——— Yes.
——— And see I’ve been making these books from my mother’s letters, but it’s a limited edition, one of a kind really, and nobody wants to buy them, so I have no money.
——— But you are working all the time and you have no money?
——— Yeah. See, nobody wants a pretty book that’s full of enough information to make you care but not enough information to want to keep it under your pillow at night.
——— That presents us with a dilemma, doesn’t it? How are you going to pay me?
——— Well, to be quite honest, I thought I’d see if you wanted to buy these lil books, three, I’ve made so far. Then, I’d give you that money and you’d have my mother in your pocket. They’re really very tiny.