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
——— Okay, I’ll tell you. In an apartment I live in with Thayer in Paris, 17th Arrondissement with an android who has three faces and a woman who has two behinds like a table, I have a wonderful esplanade. Yet outside my apartment I see Thayer burying a million dollars and waving at me like our future is assured, but the android with eyes that became neon whenever he spoke and his eyes lit up was restless. He said, “Oh yes, it’s just that Thayer doesn’t know where he’s buried the money.” With this I start to panic, but the android, whose name is Pratt, says I shouldn’t be worried cause they’ve awready started looking for it. I look out over the esplanade, which is quite large, to see Thayer digging.
Hyacinthe says I should go along with her because it’ll take forever for them to find this million dollars. So we start to walk through all the rooms which are very airy with floor-to-ceiling windows and parquet floors. After what seems like a terribly long journey through the bright and wide rooms, we come to an arch of marble. We go through this arch into a bustlin’ Pan-African market. Everybody from Fez to Nairobi or Dakar had items for sale or was buying. But the currency was cruzeiros, which puzzled me, but also took some of the sting out of my situation. I couldn’t feel too badly about not having cruzeiros because my million dollars was buried somewhere in front of my apartment. And we don’t even know where that was.
Hyacinthe and I look at a lot of things at the market. Yet I am attracted to a woman with a stall where fossilized woods and stones were joined to crystal hand-hewn pieces. There are several that I like and I tell her I’ll be back.
——— Yes, Lili…What do you make of that?
——— Oh, there’s a bit more….
——— Okay.