Swing Time

Author's Name: Zaidi Smith

“I know there is always a girl with a secret, something hidden and broken about her. Walking through the village with Amy, entering people’s houses, shaking their hands, eating their food and drink, being hugged by their children, I often thought I had seen her again, the girl who lives everywhere and at all times in history, who sweeps the yard or pours tea or carries someone else’s child on her hip, looking up at you with a secret she cannot reveal.” Two black girls dream of becoming dancers—but only one of them, Tracy, the daughter of one of Michael Jackson’s backup dancers, has the real talent. The other only has ideas: about rhythm and time, the black body and black music, what is the seed from which a tribe grows? And what makes a person a free individual. It is a story that runs from childhood, where that deep friendship has brought the two girls together since school and dance classes, to maturity, when they no longer visit each other, but they have not forgotten "Everlasting each other."