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
Why everybody look so seedy? Everything so stink and nasty? The place deserted, still fulla these no-count sycophants. What else to do, but find the music. Go directly to the jukebox, Liliane. Find a melody, Lili. Go get you some music. I brush by smells of bourbon, musk, weed, and sweat. Any other time I’d at least check out a silhouette, but not now. I get to the jukebox, temporary Promised Land. Thank you, Jesus. Lemme see. Lemme see. Lemme see. Yes, The Shirelles, “Blue Holiday,” Barrett Strong, “I Apologize,” and Willie Colon, “The Hustler.” For me. I dedicate all this to myself. Nadia is rubbing up behind me like she’s bout to pee on herself. “What in the hell do you want, Nadia? He disappeared. He’s outta here and you, you sposed to know every goddamed thing and you don’t know who I could be talkin’ bout.”
“Now. Hold your horses, Miz whatchamacallit…. All I said was I couldn’t place nobody quite how you explained. Sound like Gabriel and his horn on a Concorde jet or something.”
“I don’t make fun of you like that,” I stammered. Well, what difference did it make. I’ve got my drawings, got my bronze braids, and I ain’t got my feelings hurt.
That’s not quite true. I’d grown dependent on this set of shoulders. That’s not like me, to give up so much to a man’s guardianship. I’d worked with fire and peculiar mixes of metals to fashion myself a canopy in his image. I was bashful, demure even, when I pictured myself before him. And we know I don’t know who he is. Well, the crux of it is that I wanted a technologically proficient Third World man to enter the twenty-first century with me. I know, I know a barbarian when I see one. I know I’ll know the King of Kings, when it’s that time. I know this boy ain’t the Apocalypse, but you can’t hear it? Oh God, whenever I see the line from his elbow to his earlobe, Carla Thomas jumps all over my ass talkin’ bout, “Gee whiz.” Is this the real nature of pornography? Have I lost my mind and any sense of integrity a feminist has to have to be taken seriously? There’s a possibility that no one can tell. He’s not like a tattoo or scarification, I mean.
Can you tell by looking?
“No.”
“Nadia, shut up. He could take you to his house and bring you back in six weeks and you wouldn’t know.”