This Morning, This Evening, So Soon

On the eve of the narrator and his family's departure for the United States after twelve years of residence in Paris, the narrator is being chided by his wife and visiting sister about his nightmares. He is worried about his return to the racist United States after such a long absence and what effect it will have on his multiracial family and his career.

“This Morning, This Evening, So Soon,” concerns a black American expatriate living in Paris during the late 1950s. He has lived there for many years, marrying a white Swedish woman whom he met there, and fathering a son with her. He has even established a successful career in France as an actor and singer, and he is recognized as a celebrity wherever he goes. But now he has been invited to make a series of appearances in the United States, and has been offered a very lucrative Hollywood movie deal; so, as the story opens, he is about to return to the U.S. for the first time since the death of his mother eight years before. He is also taking Harriet and Paul; the boy has heard all his life about the magic of America, and is tremendously excited to see it.

But what our narrator cannot convey to Paul, because how could one explain this to a child? -is that the social and political climate for blacks in this pre-Civil Rights era is not the same as it is in France. In France, the fact that our black narrator is married to a white woman is considered perfectly normal; in America, it was, in many places, still illegal, and mixed-race couples could expect to be subject to stares, if not downright harassment. The narrator recalls a visit to New York at the time of his mother's death when he had to ask whether a certain hotel "would take us" in other words, would rent rooms to blacks. He remembers, also, an incident involving his sister Louisa, in which four black teens were riding in a car in Alabama and the police stopped them because they thought that one of the girls was white; the policemen made her expose herself to them to prove that she was not.

The story is structured around a series of social interactions. The first concerns the narrator's family and his Paris existence. He puts his son to bed in the concierge's apartment, and his wife and sister go out on the town. The narrator slips into the first of his reveries on his apartment balcony overlooking the Eiffel Tower as he revisits his first years in Paris as an expatriate and struggling artist. He speculates on the whereabouts of his old North African friends and the conditions of the current Algerian conflict. He is in love with Paris and the French because they do not judge him on skin color, but he deplores their colonial war.

Chico an African American male expatriate who finds personal and career success in a foreign country. It shows his fears about returning to the United States after many years. He is concerned about the reception facing his interracial family, and wonders about his ability to continue his career in the United States. Examples of prejudice that he and his father experienced lace the story, giving credence to the narrator's apprehensions for his son.

The narrator is at the crux of many conflicts. He is an African American male living in Paris with an adopted language and culture. He has a white wife and mulatto son whom he loves, yet he fears for their safety.