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
——— Oh, I can move it right on up to date for you, sir. What you think about us being defined as chattel or being valuable or valueless in relation to white folks? That’s not too far off from slavery, is it? A white man owns you or he doesn’t. We are free or slave, right? Seems pretty clear to me. Easy, even a child could understand.
——— Lili…here’s some tissue…. Maybe you’re crying because as a child, you didn’t understand what you see as so easy, so simple.
——— I just never thought…It never crossed my mind that Mama’d run off with a white man.
——— Is this something your father told you?
——— Said: “Once she told me she’d always love him, I had no choice. I told her, Liliane, I told her, she’d lose you and everything we’d worked for. I couldn’t let you go with her, don’t you see? Darling Liliane.” I don’t want to talk about this anymore.
——— Liliane, you don’t have to talk.
——— But, if I don’t talk, how can I get better, or anything? How can I be doing my therapy, if I don’t talk to you?
——— Sometimes our work is talking. Sometimes our work is simply being, experiencing feelings and thoughts we’ve put so far away we have no words for them. Then, the silence and our breathing allow these feelings to find the shapes and sounds of the words we need.
——— The white people made my father kill off my mother, take my mother away from me. It was such an affront to his “manhood,” his “dignity,” that he couldn’t allow my mother to live in the house with a white man in her heart, can you believe that? Didn’t matter, if it was some other kind of man, a Sikh or a Tamil, a Brazilian, anybody, but not a white man. And poor Mama, all she did was fall in love and cause she fell in love with a “white” man she got “disappeared” like this is Argentina? I can’t move my arms. Everything is very heavy and slow. I can’t move, I’m tellin’ you.
——— Why do you want to move, Liliane?
——— Oh, God, I don’t know, but I’ve got to do something.
——— Why do you have to do “something,” Liliane?
——— Because everybody else is crazy, that’s why.
——— What would happen if you didn’t do “something”? What if you were still? Then what?