Summary

In Chapter II, when Jefferson was eight or nine, she was obsessed with Bud Powell. She played his album when she was alone. She liked to imagine his “dark, sweating face” while listening (26). Music was his escape. However, Jefferson had yet to fully understand his identity and story.

Jefferson remembers her father telling her about Powell. She wondered what it was like to influence people the way he did, especially people like her father, who “always spoke gravely of [their] menaced and martyred race giants” (29).

Jefferson considers the ways in which jazz musicians rescued people. Her father, Ronald, was the same, in that he was a pediatrician. Over time, his depression worsened. She wonders how his work contributed. Irma often scolded him for only remembering the negative things. It took years for Jefferson to “inherit his despair” and make it into...