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
We laughed and fucked some more. We don’t seem to have no bilingual or multicultural dilemma gettin’ to some primeval state of being. Actually, I always thought it was funny that this little bitch talkin’ all the time using English vocabulary, this sassy-assed gal could hardly say hello in Spanish, but could talk her way all over Fort-de-France, she didn’t do nothin’ but scream when we did what it was we did. Now, this is East 6th Street and ain’t a lot gone down anywhere that ain’t gone down here but I always gave my baby, mi luchadora, a pillow she could bite on. Then I’d turn up Willie Colon’s anything real loud. She liked Colon. Knew all the brass choruses, every trombone solo by heart. Between him and his mouthpiece and her body and my tongue, she was speakin’ all kinds of languages. Sometimes, she’d admit that she saw the same things I saw in the faces of our people, but that took time and careful questioning to get her to say yes she saw what I saw, how I saw it and when I saw it. She’d swear to me that our visions were the same. But she was so hard-headed, I couldn’t possibly take her word for it the first time she figured out how to say something to me that might make me stop. I mean to leave her talking whatever tongue those groans that creep from her thighs to her mouth might be speaking. Now I’m a nice fella but I had to get her to where she spoke my language; I had to get her to where she knew wasn’t nobody could understand her but me. Nobody could insist that particular tongue but me. Ever. Not a soul.
Liliane insisted, as she had to; she was an intellectual. The girl truly believed certain thoughts, even certain gestures, were impossible in certain languages. She was driven, by some power I never understood, to learn every language, slave language, any black person in the Western Hemisphere ever spoke. She felt incomplete in English, a little better in Spanish, totally joyous in French, and pious in Portuguese. When she discovered Gullah and papiamento, she was beside herself. I kept tellin’ her wasn’t no protection from folks hatin’ the way we looked in any slave owner’s language, but she had to believe there was a way to talk herself outta five hundred years of disdain, five hundred years of dying cause there is no word in any one of those damn languages where we are simply alive and not enveloped by scorn, contempt, or pity. There’s no word for us. I kept tellin’ her. No words, but what we say to each other that nobody can interpret.