Summary

In “Broken Spirit,” an American black woman gives a newly-arrived South African journalist French lessons, and the two become friends and then lovers. Rather than viewing his arrival in the United States as a lucky escape from apartheid, the South African is appalled by his perception that black Americans have lost their traditions and their culture. He is playful in the lessons, joking that the narrator should emigrate to Swaziland, where women are not “neurotic and lonely” (112). When drinking, however, he would cry bitterly about his sense of entrapment and loss. The narrator goes away for the summer and has a peaceful time, though she does not hear from her friend. She reads disbelievingly in the newspaper one morning that he has committed suicide by jumping from a twentieth-story window.

In “Documentary Style,” a black filmmaker straight out...