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 mean, I’m so sleeping away and sighing, but I’ve gotta eat, right now, cause cold breakfasts are truly terrible, don’t you think? I wanta tell him how good it all is. The eggs aren’t runny or too brown. I can’t tolerate brown, burned eggs. I can’t stand the smell of them. So these eggs that he’d made were bright yellow and fluffy, like cotton candy they were. They weren’t lukewarm either. Oh, he put such seasonings.
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——— Do you believe there are men who aren’t bein’ paid who go to such trouble?
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——— Well. Hey, I usedta didn’t, but now I do.
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——— Oh God, he’s funny. He stands up, just so fulla himself. Got a real cute butt, now that I think of it. A backside that sorta flirts with me in spite of myself…. So there is my mambo man with his flirtatious behind straightening his shirt in front of the windows. This boy don’t have no shirt on. He’s quite amiably wonderfully naked. Jesus…
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——— Whatta fool, hum. Well, once his shirt is all tucked in and his creases in his pants straightened. He might as well have put on a tie and a top hat roamin’ round butt-naked like that, naked as a jay bird, but with élan, you know. So he starts to push these chairs out of his mambo path with a ferocity, ah, a man obsessed, and says in one of those voices I imagined when I was little, he says and it’s like a stream of wet gold floats by my face his words are like that, “Would you like to mambo with me?”
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——— These things don’t happen to people. Things as lovely as this don’t happen to people like me at least.
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——— I must sound ridiculous.
——— What does it matter?
——— I don’t know. It’s just I’m grinning about something you don’t know and I don’t believe it happens, that’s all. Cause I said “Yes.” “Yes, I wanna mambo with you.” I said “Yes.” How could I say no?
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——— How could anybody say no?
——— Why would you say no to a guy standin’ in a window, naked, as you say, who just wants to dance?
——— On the other side of that window, sir, is the one and only Paradise Cafe.
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——— It’s this bristling lime and yellow bar with a sometimey neon sign over the door. Pa adis Caf. That’s so funny, something missing from paradise.
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——— I almost feel like I’m in Laredo or Tijuana, but we’re not. He’s never spent no time near the border or places like El Paso and Matamoras. Oh, the bars are just as tiny and carnal, carnal….
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