Summary

"Already."

The author waits and watches for Nzola in their favorite restaurant, but she does not show up; Ray tells him that she is seeing a handsome, athletic, lighter-skinned man. Meanwhile, the author reduces his actual participation in classes, regularly attending only a women’s study class where he comes to understand more about the nature of male-female violence and the origins and impact of terms like “patriarchy … I knew the power to abuse destroyed the interiors of men as much as it destroyed the interiors and exteriors of women” (141). He continues to read widely, wondering “…what black writers weren’t writing when we spent so much creative energy begging white folk to change” (144). He also continues to eat enormously and to write, at one point having a piece of writing published in the school paper only because he...