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
I go to church I could be so much blood-soaked cloud and dust, scraggly blackened wood beam smoldering in my glowing flesh, so many colored buds, colored blossoms, to be picked at by coroners, laughed at by crackers, reported in the news: “Pieces of young colored girls gathered today in a festival of death held from Mobile to Biloxi.” My mama does get on me when I talk like this. “This ain’t much of anything, child. Don’t you know how much worse slavery times must have been?” “No, Mama. I don’t know how much worse. I truly don’t.”
The sun was preening herself on the edges of the green-smoked seas by the time I roused myself. As always in my dreams I’d been to tea with Nicholás Guillén and Léon Dámas on a veranda that overlooked the port where no more slave ships arrived, no Spanish planters shouted orders for their porcelains to be treated delicately by slaves who’d have broken more than glass if given a chance; no young women caked white flour on their faces to be sure they weren’t mistaken for quadroons or octaroons or, heaven forbid, a mulatta. No, none of them were romping in my dreams. No COLORED ONLY in Cuba. That’s why my dreams went there. That’s why I knew all this would end someday. First Haiti, then Cuba; could Mississippi be far behind? Liliane was incapable of ascertaining the ironies, of course. She loathed the separation required by law for drinking water and eating in public places, but I assured her this had no effect on us at all. “Liliane, we simply don’t go there, any of those ‘theres,’ so how could I be in a frenzy about what I don’t do.” As you can guess, Liliane remained skeptical. Nevertheless, she’s my friend. Her naïveté cannot hamper my devotion.
“Liliane, I do believe we should be getting home now. The sun’s going down this very minute. We got to help Mama attend to her guests and get ready ourselves, you know. The big party for the Legal Defense Fund is this evening. Have you forgotten?”
“How could I forget that? Is it true Martin Luther King himself is coming?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Nobody knows when he might be coming, but a lot of other teenagers our age will be around for sure. That’s why we need to get back, tend to this hair and make ourselves beguiling. That’s what I think.”